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Lobbying the County Council and it's Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee

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The County Council's next Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee (HOSC) meeting is on Tuesday 20th September - 10.15am, Cotswold District Council chamber.

 

Stroud Against the Cuts will be lobbying this meeting outside from 9.30am. This map should show where the chamber is (the postcode is GL7 1SE if not). http://maps.google.co.uk/maps/ms?hl=en&ie=UTF8&msa=0&msid=105049739461554593432.000473d786097eea30e6e&ll=51.711741. Please contact us if you would like to attend and we will try to co-ordinate transport.,-1.963377&spn=0.009307,0.022745&z=15&source=embed

 

We are also calling on people to contact the current Chair of the Health and Overview Scrutiny Committee (stephen.mcmillan@gloucestershire.gov.uk) and our local county councillors, see http://glostext.gloucestershire.gov.uk/mgMemberIndex.aspx?bcr=1 for contact details.

 

 

For points you might like to make in your emails, and reasons why we are targetting the County Council's HOSC click the link below  

These proposals constitute the biggest shake up of the Health Service ever in Gloucestershire.

Never before has a social enterprise been entrusted with such a large public health care undertaking as part of a single transfer. 

Consultation of staff was limited to the details of the new arrangements rather than on leaving the NHS.
 
Prior to the decision being made, as few as 127 members of the public out of 600,000 people in Gloucestershire had been consulted.
Once the transfer has gone through, the County Council will no longer be able to exercise democratic control over these services.
A full scale scrutiny of this proposed transfer of NHS services to a Community Interest Company should be carried out on behalf of the people of Gloucestershire.

Why are we lobbying this meeting? 

Stroud Against Cuts has seen a letter from the head of the SW Strategic Health Authority which states that Cllr Gravells (then chair of the Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee or HOSC) told the NHS bosses last summer that they didn't need to bother consulting us in relation to the transfer of our hospitals, nurses and therapists out of the NHS and into a Social Enterprise Trust (SET). 

We have also discovered that the County Council has a legal responsibility to scrutinise significant changes to our health care (through the Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee) but that they have not done this properly.  The failure to scrutinise this process comes in contrast to the way they DID scrutinise much SMALLER decisions about health provision, and previous close scrutiny of a similar plan to transfer Stroud Hospital to a social enterprise a few years back, which resulted in that plan being roundly rejected by councillors.