Consultation into NHS beds in south Warwickshire delayed until next year
FRUSTRATION mounts in Shipston as the Ellen Badger hospital development continues without any plans for beds and a promised public consultation is still almost a year away, despite it being well overdue.
The site is due to open in spring 2025, before the consultation concerning beds is complete.
The committee of the Beds for the Badger campaign group have organised a meeting at Townsend Hall for 7pm next Tuesday (18th June) to discuss the current state of play and its next steps.
Guest of honour will be Josh Dickin, mayor of market town Bishop’s Castle. He and others secured a recent victory in opening their community hospital more than two years after NHS bosses had closed it.
He previously visited the Shipston Town Council offices to advise on some of the legal and tactical aspects of their campaign.
A Beds for the Badger spokesperson said: “In May 2023, South Warwickshire University Foundation Trust (SWFT) issued a press statement to say that the inpatient beds that had been temporarily removed from the Ellen Badger Hospital would not return to Shipston, that they would remain in Leamington.
“A mass meeting and two protest marches made the residents’ position clear. The county and district councils also insisted on public consultation.
“Nearly a year ago, on 19th July, the Coventry and Warwickshire Integrated Care Board (CWICB) allowed nine months to prepare a business case for public consultation. That time is up, and we now request an explanation of progress towards that public consultation at a public meeting to which both SWFT and the CWICB are invited.”
This week CWICB chief integration officer Laura Nelson wrote to Shipston mayor John Dinnie with the bombshell news that provision would be further delays to the much promised consultation and and findings on bed review.
Whether the Ellen Badger would have beds or not has been long said to be contingent on the boards’ findings.
Ms Nelson explained that there had been a delay on the consultation as initially it was just looking at the removal of beds from the Badger, but needed to be broadened to bed provision across the county, and that there were other complicating factors that would delay the next stage until end of April 2025.
She said: “In order to develop a pre-consultation business case, we need to now work on developing deliverable options for community beds in South Warwickshire, informed by both the business case submitted by SWFT and the rehabilitation review undertaken by the ICB. We anticipate that this process will include additional public engagement to ensure that the options are the right ones for the communities affected by potential changes.
“Once the final options are identified and agreed, this would form the pre-consultation business case. If the options constitute a major change to current services, we would then move to public consultation on the options, before making a final decision at the ICB Board. Under this current schedule we will be in a position to take this final decision to ICB Board by the end of this financial year.
“I appreciate that this timeline is disappointing for you and as I stated above, our initial aim was to be in a position to deliver the pre-consultation business case sooner. However external factors have meant that has not been possible.”
Beacuse of rulings around what civil servants and the election, she declined to attend next week’s meeting.
