Thursday 8th January 7.30pm

Health & Well Being Scrutiny Committee

The main items discussed at this meeting were Management of Long Term Conditions; Sutton Hospital Site and the Performance Rating for Adult Social Care Services and Annual Review of Performance Report.

 

The Management of long-term conditions item was to agree the scope of the scrutiny of this item. Wolfie Smith from the Care Services Improvement Partnership had been invited to give advice based on her knowledge and experience and we also received useful input from Samantha Edwards of SCILL. We were unable to agree without further information how we should narrow the focus of the scrutiny down so we requested further information for our next meeting.

 

Sutton Hospital Site

I had suggested that we brought this item to committee as there were a number of proposals for this site and I felt that we needed to keep abreast of them. It was pointed out that if the site in full or part were to be sold off for housing then this would increase the demands on healthcare resources in an area that was already felt to be under resourced with GPs or health centres. I obtained clarification that sale of the site was integral to the funding of the Better Healthcare Closer to Home (BHCH) programme.

 

We also found out that Sutton Hospital was planned to be used as a decant site during the refurbishment of St Helier Hospital under BHCH.

 

We were unable to obtain reassurance that no mental health beds would be lost to the borough.

 

There was general consensus that the majority of the site should be retained for the purposes of health provision.

 

Under the Performance Rating for Adult Social Care Services and Annual Review of Performance Report Adi Cooper, Strategic Director of Adult Social Services and Housing presented the results of the report which showed that Sutton had achieved a rating of good or excellent in all areas of work covered by the report. Areas had still been highlighted for improvement and an action plan was being prepared. The chair Cllr Gordon-Bullock congratulated Ms Cooper and her staff on the results. Cllr. Thistle requested information on the retention and recruitment and staff aware that this was problematic across all boroughs currently.