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Feature on Wyre Forest District Council Elections!

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Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt called it the 'best year ever' for the NHS but thousands of health workers in the Midlands do not agree as they prepare to pick up their P45s.

In Stoke-on-Trent 100s of people will march through the streets on Saturday 29 April to protest at the job cuts meaning that with just four days to go to the Local Elections, health is once again top of the political agenda.

In Wyre Forest health became the defining issue in the 2001 General Election when traditional politics were put to one side and people power won the day.

Independent candidate Richard Taylor was elected after a long-running campaign against cutting services at the Kidderminster General Hospital and he won again in 2005.

His Independent Health Concern group also took control of Wyre Forest District Council for a while but things have now moved on and they only have eight councillors left.

So is it time to write the political obituary of the Health Concern campaign?

Councillor Liz Davies (Health Concern) insists the voters are not ready to ditch them.

"They are angry about the job cuts. They are angry about the financial situation of the acute trust and they are concerned about the service they are going to get and that is not just about the hospitals.

"It is what happens when you come home."

If Health Concern does collapse, the Conservatives hope they will be the beneficiaries.

Currently they are the largest party and they are hoping they can take overall control.

Councillor Steve Clee (Conservative) says they have built up popularity by focussing on bread-and-butter issues.

"With the experience of the business sector councillors I have in my group we have driven down the ever increasing council tax burden on the electors of Wyre Forest."

Wyre Forest is also home to a large grouping of eight councillors from the unreconstructed Liberal Party - that is the party of Gladstone and Lloyd George rather than Kennedy and Campbell.

Councillor Mike Oborski (Liberal) says health is a big issue but it may not help Health Concern.

"It is a very powerful issue, it matters to a lot of people. But if you are asking me about Health Concern I think they will lose more seats."

Labour have never really been forgiven for the downgrading of Kidderminster hospital.

It was Labour's David Lock who lost his Westminster seat to Richard Taylor and the local party now only has four councillors left.

They've decided to concentrate on different issues as Councillor Jamie Shaw (Labour) explains. "There is still a significant shortage of affordable housing. We have to put that right.

"We have the mechanisms. We have the money. We should be doing more to provide more family homes."

As for the Liberal Democrats, well they only have two councillors; eclipsed as they are by their Liberal forebears.

Councillor Helen Dyke (Lib Dem) also thinks Health Concern could be in for a tough night.

"People are very angry about the 720 proposed job cuts in Worcestershire's acute trust but I still think Health Concern will lose ground."

So is it the beginning of the end for Health Concern in Kidderminster or will the current crisis in the NHS breathe new life into the issue?

Our Political Editor Patrick Burns has been finding out.

As the Royal College of Nursing warned that more than 13,000 NHS jobs were set to be lost because of the £600m deficit and it was reported that 11 out of 26 health targets are not on track to be hit, Ms Hewitt insisted that health care was improving.

Council action on NHS cuts

Apr 21, 2006

A special task force has been set up to fight the 720 NHS job cuts planned across Worcestershire because of fears over the "devastating" impact on patients.

Councillors unanimously backed a motion led by Liberal leader Mike Oborski to form the all party-group, at last night's full council meeting. He branded the cuts an "outrage and a disgrace" and feared for the impact on local patient care and job skills of hospital staff.

Earlier this month Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust announced the loss of the jobs which will include posts at Kidderminster Hospital. The move follows the revelation the trust was £30 million in debt.

Councillors Chris Nicholls, Jill Fairbrother Millis, Siri Hayward, John Aston, Helen Dyke and Jack Simmonds will hold the first meeting of the group on Tuesday. The task group will work with the county council and the trust to study the impact of the cuts.

The motion read: "This council believes the loss of one in seven staff will further undermine public confidence in local health management, destroy staff morale and inevitably lead to a deterioration in services to the patients and the public.

"This further destabilisation of services across this county is totally unacceptable. The council calls upon the county council health services scrutiny panel to conduct an immediate scrutiny exercise.

"The council determines to establish the group to co-ordinate the opposition to this latest ill begotten threat to local hospital services."

Councillor Oborski said: "This is a non political move to show how much we are opposed to these cuts."

Council backs Liberal Land Oak Motion...

Wyre Forest District Council voted unanimously on Wednesday night to support a Liberal Motion opposing the proposed banning of traffic turns from the A456 Birmingham Road onto the A449 Chester Road North at Kidderminster's Land Oak Junction.

Moving the Motion Liberal Leader Cllr Mike Oborski said:-

Chairman, I am moving this motion and my colleague Cllr Lewis will Second.

At Wednesday nights Meeting of the Wyre Forest District Council the Council voted unanimously to support a Motion moved by Liberal Group Leader Cllr Mike Oborski opposing the latest round of Hospital cuts.

The Motion declared:-

"THIS COUNCIL totally opposes the proposed £30m reduction in the spending of Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust which will lead to the loss of 720 posts from across the three hospitals involvrd at Kidderminster, Worcester and Redditch.

Council believes that the loss of 1 in 7 staff will further undermine public confidence in local Health Service management, destroy staff morale and inevitably lead to a deterioration in services to patients and the public. This further destabilisation of Hospital Services across this County is totally and absolutely unacceptable.

Council shares the concerns of Worcestershire County Council with regards to the potential impact of these cuts upon the provision and funding of County Social Care services.

Council calls upon the County Council Health Services Scrutiny Panel to conduct an immediate scrutiny exercise into the detailed implications of the proposed spending cut.

Council determines to immediately establish a Task Group tp co-ordinate the Council's opposition to this latest ill begotten threat to local Health Services."

Cllr Mike Oborski told the Meeting...

Chairman, I am moving the Motion and Cllr Stokes (Health Concern) will second it.

Well Chairman, Here we go again! Another year and another set of Health Cuts. It is beginning to seem as if this has gone on for ever. 

Like the Flying Dutchman eternally condemned to sail the oceans so Kidderminster Hospital or Treatment Centre—or whatever it happens to be called today—seems eternally condemned to wave after wave of cuts!

Here we go again—£30 million cuts—720 posts to go across the three County Hospitals.

Let’s start by pinning the blame firmly and squarely where it belongs—on Her Majesty’s benighted shambles of a Government. They failed to accurately predict the cost of the new Health Service Contracts. They then turned a mess into a crisis by forcing the Acute Trusts to balance their budgets in only one year when that was clearly a total impossibility without damage to the service provided to the public. In some cases poor management may have contributed but the harsh and blunt underlying reality is that the Government has either by design or by sheer incompetence brought matters to a head turning — as I said - a mess into a crisis.

Now of course the head of the NHS says this is not a “crisis” it is a “challenging opportunity”.

It strikes me that this is rather like the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse riding into town and happily announcing “Don’t think of us as “War”, “Pestilence”, “Famine” and “Death” - think of us instead as a “Challenging opportunity for population down sizing”!

Chairman, how can £30 million be extracted from Budgets and how can 720 posts disappear without extensive damage to services and amenities for patients and public?

The freezing of posts alone is already dangerous and detrimental where the post frozen happens to be to vital to a Department or a procedure. No doubt we will hear more of that during the debate.

Furthermore, the supplementary papers, out today, for next Monday’s meeting of the Cabinet of the Worcestershire County Council, make clear the knock on effects. They say:-

The Council must be concerned at reports of financial deficits in the Health Service locally and the impact this may have on local people. The Council’s care services for adults and children are closely linked to the work of the Health Service. Working arrangements are already in place to pool budgets and jointly commission or manage vital services. It is essential that this collaboration remains stable and services are not jeopardised. 

The staff reductions announced by the Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust and impending savings plans from Primary Care Trusts will have a potential impact on social care in areas such as jointly funded services, pooled budgets, and the capacity of community care services to respond to increasing pressures to support people at home.

We need Chairman, in the light of this new evidence, to add to the motion the words “Council shares the concerns of Worcestershire County Council with regards to the potential impact of these cuts upon the provision and funding of County Social Care services”.

Chairman, this is not a localised crisis. It is part of a nation wide crisis with 8,000 job cuts announced and the four major national children’s Hospitals having announced yesterday that the deficits which they face this year, in the case of Birmingham Childrens Hospital £2 million, will mean that access to vital highly specialised life saving treatments will be restricted.

Chairman, we have to look at the local impact. The jobs and skills which will be lost here and the damage to local services and the impact on local patients.

The County Councils Health Scrutiny Panel need to look in detail at implications across the County. We also need a “Task Group” of some sort—NOT to duplicate their work—but rather to campaign and articulate our cause here in Wyre Forest on the specific Wyre Forest aspects of the situation.

Chairman we cannot allow these cuts to go ahead without a fight—without our total opposition, our organised opposition, our effective opposition. These cuts are an outrage and a disgrace. This Council must give a lead in standing up and fighting. I move.

Cllr Siri Hayward explained:-

There are 2 worrying aspects associated with the 720 job cuts.

Firstly, the impact they will have on patient services. John Rostill said on the radio that as nurses and admin and clerical are the two largest groups working in the Trust, they will suffer the greatest cuts.

The Trust is anticipating that most of the jobs will be lost by natural wastage. This is a highly laudable aim until you look at the areas with the greatest staff turnover which are the areas of the Trust with highly stressful jobs – namely theatres and ITU.

The anaesthetists are very concerned that major operations will not be able to be performed without adequate numbers of ITU staff.

Trust managers have said that if a post is deemed vital to the work of the Trust they will allow it to be recruited to but the process of applying to the managers for permission to recruit is bound to increase the time lag between one person leaving a post and another being recruited. But -the cuts have got to come from somewhere.

Apparently the 720 figure was decided on because that was considered to be the number which the trust could absorb without patient services being adversely affected. It was assumed that the average salary would be £25000. If the job cuts affected staff with lower level salaries, the number would have to be more – higher level salaries and the number would be less.

The second worrying aspect about the job cuts is that they will not solve the trust’s financial problems as these are caused by the actual structure of the organisation which is the result of government policy and successive ‘modernisation’ attempts.
· PFI – is a tremendous financial drain on the trust’s resources. Not only do the exorbitant capital charges have to be met, but also exorbitant service charges - for example, portering, catering and cleaning services.
· Worcestershire is at a disadvantage because it is a semi-rural trust covering a large geographical area. Consequently it has three locations at Worcester, Redditch and Kidderminster which means that it has three times the overheads that an urban trust would have

· Government Targets have to be met. Traditionally, before the introduction of the internal market in 1975, operating lists were based on clinical priorities. Cancer and other life-threatening conditions were given priority on the operating lists while non life threatening conditions such as herniae and varicose veins were left at the bottom of the list. Consequently the waiting list for these conditions was very long.

Now trusts have to meet government targets and no patient has to wait longer than 6 months for any operation. To achieve this near impossible task Waiting List Initiatives are performed at WRI every Saturday and Sunday and Bank Holiday. These are achieved by paying stressed clinical staff who have already done a full weeks work a higher rate of pay so that they will do extra operating lists. The financial penalties which the trust will incur if they do not meet the targets are far greater than the extra cost of performing the extra lists.

The ironic thing is that the trust invariably works over the levels set in the contracts with the Primary Care Trusts and last year the PCT appealed to the Strategic Health Authority because it didn’t have the money to pay Worcestershire NHS Acute Health Trust for all the work it had done and the SHA knocked £9.5 million off the amount we were owned!- unbelievable! So basically the trust is between a rock and a hard place as it gets penalised if it does not reach government targets yet it does not get paid for all the work that it does!

· National Tariffs this is another government whammy which initially caused such a furore when it was introduced last year that it had to be withdrawn, redesigned and reintroduced. As the title suggests this is about the government setting the tariffs for work which apply throughout the country and as I have already explained, Worcestershire Trust is very disadvantaged as it has three times the overheads of an urban trust, so the future does not look too promising!

To illustrate the impact of these tariffs, the amount of money which was allowed the trust for an emergency medical emergency was £1200 because the patient had to be admitted and have a raft of tests performed in order to ascertain what the problem is and to monitor the patient while a treatment regime was being introduced. This could not be achieved as a day case. This regime will now be impossible as the rate has been slashed to £130 which will not pay for the tests let alone admission and monitoring.

These 720 job cuts are designed to bring the trust within reach of breakeven in 2 years. This still has to be agreed by the SHA and the Department of Health. They may insist that breakeven is achieved this year in which case patient services will have to be slashed. The trust management understandably say that they will insist that the SHA decides which services will have to go.

So sadly, these cuts are not the end of the situation, but the beginning of the end.

Junction Motion

Liberal Councillors have tabled a Motion for next week's Meeting of the Wyre Forest District Council urging the Council to oppose proposals to ban turns from the A456 Birmingham Road onto the A449 Chester Road North at Kidderminster's Land Oak Junction.

Cllr Fran Oborski described proposed ban as "a total recipe for motoring chaos on the main roads and huge traffic flows on local residential roads as they turn into "rat runs"!"

The Motion reads:

THIS COUNCIL totally opposes the Amy Mouchel proposals to ban turns from the A456 Birmingham Road onto the A449 Chester Road North at Kidderminster's Land Oak Junction.

Council believes that the implementation of the proposal would cause severe disruption for motorists, local residents and adjacent businesses and would inevitably lead to chaos on the many residential roads in the area which would be instantly converted into "rat runs".

Motion against Hospital cuts...

Liberal members of Wyre Forest District Council have tabled a Motion for next week's full Council Meeting denouncing proposed £30 million cuts and 720 job losses across Worcestershire Hospitals.

Liberal Group Leader Cllr Mike Oborski said "after all the misery and cut backs which have afflicted Hospital services in Kidderminster thse latest proposed cuts really are the last staw!"

The Motion reads:-

"THIS COUNCIL totally opposes the proposed £30m reduction in the spending of Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust which will lead to the loss of 720 posts from across the three hospitals involvrd at Kidderminster, Worcester and Redditch.

Council believes that the loss of 1 in 7 staff will further undermine public confidence in local Health Service management, destroy staff morale and inevitably lead to a deterioration in services to patients and the public. This further destabilisation of Hospital Services across this County is totally and absolutely unacceptable.

Council calls upon the County Council Health Services Scrutiny Panel to conduct an immediate scrutiny exercise into the detailed implications of the proposed spending cut.

Council determines to immediately establish a Task Group tp co-ordinate the Council's opposition to this latest ill begotten threat to local Health Services."

SORT IT NOW!

The earlier cut in places at St Ambrose Catholic Primary School from 45 to 30 per year is now looking like a big mistake. It looks as if not even all the Catholic children who want to go there will get places in future!

High School Places…

County Council figures show that in September 2008 Wyre Forest overall will have 992 places for the 951 children starting at High School. However, in Kidderminster there will be just 559 places in the three High Schools serving Kidderminster for the 639 children from the town moving up to High Schools at that time! This clearly needs sorting. We need guarantees that there will be places for all pupils and in particular places for all pupils where they and their parents want them to be!

Here we go again!

Yet further disaster. BBC report...

Debt-hit NHS trust axes 720 jobs

Worcestershire Royal Hospital is one of the hospitals affected Hundreds of jobs are to go at NHS hospitals in Worcestershire. The 720 positions are being axed in an attempt to balance the books at Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust, which needs to save £30m. One in seven staff at the county's three hospitals will be lost. The news was announced at a conference held by the trust on Thursday afternoon. It runs the Worcestershire Royal, in Worcester, the Alexandra, in Redditch, and Kidderminster Hospital sites. 'Massive shortfall' Trust chairman Michael O'Riordan said: "It looks as if we have ended 2005/6 with an overspend of around £5.5m which is very disappointing. We are not alone in our plight, but that is no consolation Trust chairman Michael O'Riordan "But far more serious is a massive and unprecedented shortfall between what we expect to get paid in 2006/7 and what we know it would cost us to provide our services in the way we currently do." The job losses proposal is subject to consultation with staff and is expected to save the trust about £8m this financial year and £16m in the next one, starting April 2007. The trust now employs 4,500 staff and has frozen more than 100 posts, which will count towards the 720 jobs to go. There have been long-standing campaigns to retain services at Redditch and Kidderminster against plans to centralise them at the largest site in Worcester. There is talk of closure of a ward at the Worcester, but the trust said there are no details yet of where jobs will be lost. Chief executive John Rostill said: "We will of course work in partnership with union representatives to ensure that any reductions in the workforce are handled sensitively and managed properly." 'Spiralling costs' Mr Rostill added: "We are not complaining about the level of funding we receive, but I need to make it crystal clear why we are in this position. "Taking on hundreds of extra staff, paying many of those staff more money, treating more patients, more quickly, with more expensive drugs and equipment - and doing all that on three separate sites - is where the money has gone." The Save Kidderminster Hospital campaign saw an MP elected The trust has taken on more than 1,000 extra staff - including 130 doctors and 500 nurses - since it was created in 2000. Mr Rostill said the trust hit a target of having no patients waiting more than 15 months in 2002. And the maximum wait fell to 12 months in 2003, and again to a maximum wait of nine months in 2004. He said: "By the end of 2005, waiting times for elective operations were down to a maximum of six months, with the majority of patients being treated far more quickly than that. "While these waiting times were falling, each year we were also dealing with ever-increasing numbers of emergency patients coming in through A&E - and making sure they were treated and admitted or sent home more quickly." 'Political targets' He said national changes to pay and conditions, meant that pay costs have "spiralled upwards". Mr O'Riordan added: "Anyone who follows the news will know that we are not alone in our plight, but that is no consolation." Mid Worcestershire MP Peter Luff said: "In the run-up to the 2005 election, the government frantically drove the NHS to meet over-ambitious political targets - and told trust managers to use every accounting trick in the book to conceal the scale of the financial problems this would inevitably create. "After the election, the new secretary of state demanded an immediate return to financial balance, causing the current crisis."

The Bridge story?

... - scroll down to find it - was clearly dated April 1st and, yes, it was an April Fool hoax. Actually all the technical guff - which reads as if it might be made up for April 1st - is in fact lifted direct from the web site of the designers of the London Millenium Bridge where it apparently explains what went wrong there!

There are lots of idiots out there - 2

In the Horsefair...

There are lots of idiots out there - 1

Some bright motorist went into the Masefield Gardens fence...