Opinion: Why Central Beds Council is failing residents by not challenging the ICB

Health Matters by David Messum, chairman of Leighton Linslade Health Provision Group...

I thought I would share part of our statement made at April’s Social Care Health & Housing committee meeting of Central Beds Council where we acknowledged the enormous challenges the Government strategy to expand the BLMK ICB into the Central East ICB presents for Infrastructure Planning...

We had to take this opportunity to remind representatives of the concerns we raised in our last communication with the ICB on the 30th January concerning the Leighton Buzzard Clinic and the 10 Year Plan for our town.

That statements in the media; at the opening of the clinic with Robin Porter and Wes Streeting present and your annual report implying the 56,000 was being delivered, had felt disingenuous that the number was closer to 10,000 ( 5 rooms out of 7) for the first six months.

Only now were we are hearing caveats around appointments, like "capacity" or "offered" or "available", and improvements were still dependent on future staff recruitment.

We asked the Chair of this committee to help facilitate our earlier request for a face to face with the ICB to clarify what was the appointment capacity before the new 7 rooms opened ; how many more appointments the rooms added and what kind of treatment – as we are keen to obtain clarity in particular on what is being termed recently by the ICB as an “urgent care service”

In addition, at January's Health & Wellbeing meeting a Councillor from Ampthill stated And I quote: “really pleased to see the continued, realistic focus on the reuse and repurposing and maximizing the use of the existing NHS estate that we have. When we first came into this we had a lot of noise about the shiny new health hubs that we all wanted, that these little improvements didn't seem much in compare us to some, but I think that they have bedded in and I think that they are, they're really useful and valued.”

We asked the Chairperson to raise a question with Councillor Zerny as to why Central Bedfordshire Council has so little ambition to challenge the ICB on its infrastructure strategy for this region.

We had the largest population in the BLMK ICB region but have seen the least investment in the past 15 years and see minimal investment here, in the next 10 Year Plan?

Why shouldn’t we expect new Health or Diagnostic Centres?

Even the planned investment that Wixams waited 16 years for, according to their MP Blake Stephenson was obtained through Bedford Borough Council who allocated £5m from its capital budget for the project?

And in his speech to Parliament in March, he stated that the “Government expect neighbourhoods to have a geography of around 50,000 people. I am afraid that that will do nothing for people in Mid Bedfordshire. It will mean either that rural communities on the edge of urban catchments will be split up and served by 'neighbourhood' health hubs in nearby major settlements, which will likely be Hitchin, Bedford, Luton or Milton Keynes.”

Well CBC have made Leighton Buzzard a 50,000 plus person neighbourhood without a Health Centre fit for the 21st Century!

I did not wish to sounds so ungrateful – we appreciate there are budget constraints and amazing work being done by all the health professionals in the town but CBC have £10M of Health infrastructure investment budget they will only spend if the ICB says there is a need , but nobody is challenging the ICB about need – why?

Next month we will share –

• Why the Central East ICB will not meet with us until September 2026

• How much did Central Bedfordshire contribute to the Wixams project.

How does CBC Executive claim Prudent Finances - £8M underspend on Budget whilst removing £10M Health Infrastructure from its Budget Allocation?