Wembley Matters reported on July 2nd that Brent Clinical Commissioing Group was proposing to Close the Central Middlesex Urgent Care Centre overnight (Midnight to 8am) citing lack of use. LINK
Dawn Butler MP (Brent Central) has now launched a Central Middlesex Hospital Campaign with a petition aimed at preventing the overnight closure LINK
Butler writes
News has broken in recent weeks that Brent Clinical Commissioning
Group (CCG) are now intending to cut the hours of operation for the
Urgent Care Centre at Central Middlesex Hospital entirely from midnight
to 8am, making potential savings in the region of £450,000 per annum.
I have used the Urgent Care Centre late at night and know first-hand
that there is an absolute need for this 24 hour service in Brent. I am
entirely opposed to cutting the hours of operation and call on the CCG
to think again and to put any future proposals to a full public
consultation.
If the Urgent Care Centre were to close at night local residents
without access to a car will have to travel for anywhere between 45
minutes and 1 hour 20 minutes on public transport in the dead of night.
I therefore call on you to join me in condemning the proposed closure
by signing my petition below. I will also continue to keep you updated
on the petition and my campaign to put a stop to this proposed closure.
Who will advocate and offer support to the disabled people
across Brent when we close down later this year?
On the same day that the Kilburn Times revealed that a
Neasden man with epilepsy has been left with £16 a month to live on under the
Universal Credit scheme LINK, a Brent charity, Brent Advocacy
Concerns, that has operated in Brent for 30 years, has been forced to
adopt an exit strategy for its operation. The charity is unable to afford the
increased rent demanded by its landlord.
John Healy of Brent Advocacy Concerns told Wembley Matters:
Last Monday afternoon, July 29th,
I had to turn down 6 disabled people, requesting advocacy from us. This
is no longer unusual, as we seem to be getting requests covering various issues
but we do not have the resources to meet the ever increasing demand any longer.
So Martin you may wish to ask
your readers including the council, as to who will advocate and offer support
to the disabled people across Brent when we close down later this year? Even today there is a sad story
about a disabled man in Neasden (on Twitter & KT) forced to live on £16
a month. Once upon a time we might have contacted him, to see if we could
help him but not anymore...
Advocacy Concerns plight has been covered
before on Wembley Matters and various promises and assurances have come to
nothing.
John continued:
You may remember when WM reported
back in November 2016 on the Health & Wellbeing Scrutiny meeting where
the chair reported that they and the CCG would do everything they could to
support us, by finding us reasonable accommodation when we were to move from
our office at the time to a new office within the centre.
This week our NHS Property
Services landlord informed us that from Dec.2019 we will have to pay over £5K a
quarter to remain in our small office in the Willesden Centre for Health
& Care. We have managed to stay afloat for the last 7 years by
only using volunteers with no paid staff and living off our reserves. But we
are now facing an annual rent of over £20K from next year, as well as covering
our overheads, including phone, broadband,insurance etc.
And in all of those past 7 years
we have not had any new funding from any source but now we have to accept, our
time is up.
Even at this late stage I call
upon Brent councillors to meet with council officers and Brent NHS Clinical
Commissioning Group to see if a solution can be found so that disabled people
in Brent get the advocacy service they sorely need in today’s callous
environment.
Brent Clinical Commissioning Group (Brent CCG) at its meeting on December 5th is likely to go ahead with a proposal to move from Wembley Centre for Health and Care in Chaplin Road, to Brent Civic Centre. Brent Council already lets out two floors in the Civic Centre to external organisations and is due to cut their staff further in the next budget. The report going before the CCG states:
The CCG
has expressed an interest to be co-located with Brent Council in its Civic
Centre (subject to affordability and commercial terms). Equally Brent Council
is extremely keen and supportive of this move and fully recognises the
opportunities for greater collaboration that co-locating would bring.
The
current HQ premises are spread across the Wembley Centre for Health and Care
site with staff working in silos largely within cellular offices. This is not
an efficient use of space nor does it foster cohesive working arrangements.
Releasing
space at the Wembley Centre for Health and Care, under the NHS Property
Services vacant space policy, potentially creates an opportunity to reduce CCG
running costs. Strategically this also supports the future aspirations for the
site to become an out of hospital hub, appropriately sized and fit for purpose.
There are
76 staff working at Brent CCG, the accommodation on offer at Brent Civic Centre
is 48 dedicated desks together with shared offices and breakout areas. This
move would require the CCG to adopt the NWL Agile Working Policy which
recommends a staff to desk ratio of between 6:10 and 7:10. The proposal
complies with the policy with a ratio of 6.3:10. The CCG is required to reduce
its office accommodation and desk allocation across its estate; as such this
proposal is in line with the overall strategic direction being adopted across
NWL.
Current
estimated project costs are £85,500 to be covered from existing revenue
funding.
There is
an annual saving to Brent CCG of £446,000 generated by moving to Brent Civic
Centre.
Tonight's Health and Wellbeing Scrutiny Committee has an item on the use of space by voluntary organisations at the Willesden Centre for Health and Care. I hope councillors will take the opportunity to try and get a positive outcome for organisations that contribute a great deal to provision but cannot afford market rents, such as Brent Advocacy Concerns LINK.
This letter to Cllr Sheth, from Sheik Auladin, Interim Chief Operating Officer of the Brent Clinical Commissioning Group could enable the Committee to focus on some possible solutions and give voluntary organisations some reassurance regarding costs and space ahead of the end of March deadline.
-->
Thank you for your letter dated 6 th November
2017 regarding the progress the CCG has made in respect of supporting voluntary
sector organisations, working within the NHS estate in Brent and specifically
at the Willesden Centre for Health and Care.
The CCG has continued to work to identify tenants for the void space across
the Brent sites in line with its commissioning intentions . As you will
appreciate our priority has to be ensuring the statutory services we commission
can access fit for purpose and appropriate accommodation; however, where
voluntary services are already in occupation at such sites, or where voluntary
organisat ions express an interest for space, we will proactively work to
establish requirements and where possible accommodate.
There has been a long standing need to provide the Burnley Practice - at the
Willesden Centre for Health and Care - with an appropriately sized and located
space within the building. The practice has been successful in securing NHS
England funding to support its relocation within the building to space
previously occupied by the Brent Association for Disabled People. The CCG is
aware that some voluntary services previously operating under the auspices of
BADP continue in occupation of part of this space, albeit they are not being
charged.
The CCG has met with each of these organisations over the past few weeks to
explain the plans, establish their ongoing space requirements and reassure the
services it will seek to secure an alternative arrangement for them within the
building. As you acknowledge, charging market rent is the policy of NHS PS over
which we have no jurisdiction; but we will draw on this relationship and try
and ensure the organisations can meet rental costs through the same or
favourable terms.
Brent CCG is committed to supporting the valuable work of the voluntary
sector in Brent. It is not possible to develop a formal policy for the use of
NHS estate by the voluntary sector, due to the CCG having no direct property
interest; however we do commit to the principles set out by Sarah Mansuralli
previously, and will continue to support the occupation of void space by
voluntary organisations where this space is not required for the delivery of
statutory or directly commissioned services.
For readers unfamiliar with the impact of sickle cell this video provides some background
There have been a number of angry reactions to Nan Tewari's guest blog LINK about the threatened cut to the funding of the Brent Sickle Cell project which highlighted the threat itself and the failure to adequately consult with the populations most affected in Stonebridge and Harlesden wards.
The decision of the Brent Clinical Commissing Group to hold a consultation meeting at an inconvenient time in Wembley Park drew this response:
The decision to hold the meeting away from Harlesden and Stonebridge is a
deliberate and cynical act of tokenism by Brent CCG and renders the
meeting as merely a 'paper exercise'. Why is Brent CCG treating this
vulnerable group of patients in such a dismissive way?
It would
appear that Brent CCG is increasingly showing itself to be incapable of
performing it's functions with any degree of competence.
Time it was held up to public scrutiny.
One comment asked bluntly if it was 'because we are black?'
Nan herself put it in the context of the treatment of residents in Harlesden and Stonebridge and the perceived lack of action by local councillors.
As if it weren't bad enough that the Central Mid A & E was closed down.....
As if it weren't bad enough that sickle cell treatment was moved to Northwick Park, 2 buses away......
As if it weren't bad enough the Harlesden population lives a decade less than others in Brent......
I
suppose after closing down the Stonebridge adventure playground,
Brent's councillors are too embarrassed to take Brent CCG to task over
this - if indeed the sleepy councillors can even be bothered about it -
after all, Harlesden and Stonebridge are pretty much captive voters for
them.
Leroy Decosta Simpson, Harlesden activist said that he would would like to see the paperwork and get his 'big bwoys' to look into it.
Philip Grant in his usual meticulous way looked at the documentation and wrote:
The report that went to the CCG's Governing Body on 6 July includes the following important paragraph:
'Overall
the service is seen by service users as a valued and forward thinking
service model that supports the management of this long term condition,
in an area of particularly high prevalence. However, the agreed Key
Performance Indicators (KPIs) demonstrate a level of performance that
requires improving. The service provider has cited a number of
operational issues which has adversely impacted on performance and
delivery of the KPIs.'
The first sentence confirms that the
project, which had only been running for a year, was already providing a
very valuable and worthwhile service to the people who needed it most.
The
second sentence refers to the failure to meet some of the "Key
Performance Indicators", showing that the service needed to be improved,
while the third sentence shows that there were reasons to show why
these KPI's had not been met in the first year.
Given the
positive impact of providing the service in its "start-up" year, it is
difficult to understand why it was not given at least another year to
make the improvements that were needed. Instead, the CCG's Executive
recommended, and the Governing Body accepted, the following option:
'Not
to extend the pilot but explore alternative sustainable models for care
for example a peer support model with Brent Council or the use of the
PAM tool can be explored to support this cohort of patients.'
It
appears that the CCG wants to pass some of its own responsibility for
(and cost of) the care of sickle cell sufferers onto Brent Council,
whose services are already stretched, without consulting with or
considering the needs of 'this cohort of patients'.
Nan Tewari, referring to the last paragraph, responded:
A fellow patient rep who attended
the CCG meeting said afterwards, that the Brent Council public Health
rep on the Governing Body said flatly that the council had no money to
support a project.
This issue, which disproportionately affects Brent's Black Caribbean and Black African population, is one that could cause massive disaffection. The CCG's decision needs to be reviewed, proper consultation put in place and an independent Equalities Impact Assessment carried out.
Incidence of sickle cell trait is approximately 1 in 4 West Africans and 1 in 10 Black Caribbean.
The Brent Patient Voice submission to the CCG can be found HERE The Brent CCG Governing Body papers can be found HERE
We
are ready to update local people on our plans for a new NHS 111 service
in the borough. We would like to invite local people to a public event
where we can set out how the new system is going to work across North
West London and get your views about our plans.
This
event is part of a series of events North West London CCGs have held to
develop the specification for the new service and find out how the
service should be accessed by patients.
