Walk-In Centres Saved? (or perhaps not…)

Bury’s NHS Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) used a verbal update reported through several Twitter posts to inform residents that the two Walk-In Centres in bury (Bury and Prestwich) are not closing on 31 March 2018.

Residents may recall that the consultation on the closure of both centres was ‘paused’ earlier this year by the CCG, following new guidance from the Government on urgent care.

The guidance requires that each NHS area (i.e. the whole of Bury) has an Urgent Care Centre to deal with some of the more minor issues which do not warrant a visit to A&E. Bury is going get one, located next to A&E at Fairfield Hospital. (It is worth asking whether there will be similar provision at North Manchester and Salford Royal which are the A&Es people in the southern end of Bury tend to use.

They then go on to say: “In addition, it is proposed that initially, three integrated health and social care hubs be developed located in Bury, Radcliffe and Prestwich to offer a range of services, including GP led walk-in services.”

“In the meantime, the two current Walk-in Centre services in Bury and Prestwich will continue to provide existing services beyond March 2018, whilst the future model for urgent care is developed.”

Good news or not?
Yes – the Walk-In Centre will be remaining open after 31 March 2018 while the new facility is developed.

Uncertain – because we don’t know what ‘including GP-led walk-in services’ means – it could just mean that there is some provision for ‘just turn up’ GP appointments, which is a welcome thing, but it does depend how many these are, and at what times. Many people’s GP’s are not based in these health centres.

No – the current 7 day a week, nurse-led open access service that people find so helpful seems certain to be finishing.

The CCG will receive a detailed report at it’s January meeting, and hopefully some of these questions and uncertainties will be addressed then. We’re going to ask for a meeting with the CCG so please let us know what queries and issues you would like to discuss with then…

Reporting Back: Overspends and Road Repairs

Last week Councillor Steve Wright attended the Council’s Overview and Scrutiny Committee:

Council Finances
Current estimates are that the Council is heading for an overspend of £3.491 million in the 2017-18 financial year.

The reasons for for the overspend are largely:
– demand for services being higher than the budget were either demand pressures (mostly adult and children’s social care)
– the Council failing to make savings that it has promised to do (the largest being leisure and waste management)
– shortfall in income – mostly car parking and commercial rents – I asked about a £80000 shortfall in the bus lane enforcement I wondered if Bury people were driving better but unfortunately it is a case of an officer over estimating the income.

The minimum safe level of balances for Bury Council is £4.250m (the smallest amount of money the Council should have to meet its commitments and deal with any unexpected urgent expenditure). At present the Council is heading to being just £0.652 over that minimum balance at the end of the year, down nearly £3.5 million in a year. Not much room for things to go wrong…..

Highways Mainenance
The report outlined plans to spend the £10 million the Council is borrowing for road repairs over three years. £1.5 million over 3 years is being spent on potholes the rest on arterial roads (no information yet where that means). Bad news for Prestwich as Virgin Media are planning a lot of fibre works so road improvements are going to happen until Virgin have completed their work.

Worryingly the report said:
“The recently announced Highway Maintenance Investment of £10million, whilst welcome, will not be sufficient to achieve significant improvements in the condition of the highway network. The rate of formation of defects will therefore continue to accelerate and with that the demands on Highway Operations will increase. Despite the proven efficiency of Highway Operations an increase in the current level of highway maintenance revenue budget is required to meet the current and future level of demand. Without this investment Bury Council will in increasingly exposed to insurance claim payouts and potential reputational damage”.

Any questions please get in touch. The full papers for the meeting are here.