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Stroud Against the Cuts says: "Offering Gloucestershire's NHS services to a social enterprise opens those services to privatisation, it does not save them from privatisation. The legal action will open those services back up to the NHS.  NHS Gloucestershire can and should keep these services in the NHS and avoid any need for any tendering process."
 

A Full Press Release is available be clicking 'Read More' below. BBC Gloucestershire have covered the story here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-gloucestershire-15124270

You can hear an interview with Caroline Molloy of Stroud Against Cuts on BBC Gloucestershire Friday 30th September morning here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p00kcfqj/Mark_Cummings_NHS_in_Gloucestershire/

Skip to 1:06:20 for the piece on NHS Gloucestershire and the legal challenge.

NHS Gloucestershire have claimed in a letter to staff that "If taken to its logical conclusion the challenge would mean that community services would be competitively tendered” and that this “may therefore accelerate the very thing the challenger says he is opposed to namely the services being provided by a body outside the NHS."

James Beecher, a co-ordinator of Stroud Against the Cuts said: “This is untrue and misleading. Firstly, without the legal challenge, the transfer to Gloucestershire Care Services CIC on October 1st would have resulted in the services being provided by a body outside the NHS – the CIC is a private limited company outside the NHS. Rather than accelerating this process, the legal challenge has delayed it.”

He added: “More importantly, the Primary Care Trust appear to being ruling out and refusing to consider several options which would keep services and staff within the NHS, without involving a legal requirement to competitively tender. If successful, our challenge will force them to consider these options, all of which have successfully been implemented elsewhere in the country”.

Rosa Curling of Leigh Day & Co Solicitors said: “Our client believes the proposed transfer would be highly detrimental to the NHS services which he and other Gloucestershire residents receive. NHS Gloucestershire has a number of options open to it, two of which would not result in a competitive process and do not appear to have been properly considered by the Trust. NHS Gloucestershire could decide to continue to provide the services itself as there is no statutory obligation for it to outsource its services. Alternatively, if NHS Gloucestershire transferred services to another NHS body, it would not need to competitively tender the services. It is only if NHS Gloucestershire decides that it wants to outsource its services and outsource them to a non-NHS trust, that the Procurement Directive applies. In those circumstances the law requires them to hold a proper and transparent, competitive process, by which a new service provider is chosen.”

Dr John Lister of national campaign group Health Emergency said: “This is a great example of what can be achieved by community campaigners working together with health unions. It is vital to expose this type of deal to public scrutiny, despite the determination of health bosses to keep them under wraps. It is a scandal that changes like this, which can have a huge effect both on the vulnerable people that use these services, and on the livelihoods of thousands of healthcare workers have been taken behind closed doors.”

He added: "There is no compulsion on health bosses to open these services up to social enterprises or the private sector: in most of England community health services continue to be successfully provided by the NHS, and that's how it should be in Gloucestershire."