Warning that Hospital admissions due to falls by older people set to reach nearly 1,000 a day.

Local Liberal Democrats have warned that the number of hospital admissions due to an older person falling, is set to rise to nearly 1,000 a day across England by the end of the decade.

The worrying forecast, according to data released by the Local Government Association, has prompted renewed calls for more funding for adult social care to invest in cost-effective prevention work to reduce falls, which can have devastating and life-threatening consequences on a person’s health and wellbeing.

New research shows that falls prevention programmes run by councils reduce the number of falls requiring hospital admission by nearly a third (29 per cent). For every £1 spent on preventing falls in the home, £3 is saved in hospital care. Extra government funding for councils to scale up this prevention work to address a rising older population would help the NHS by reducing the need for people to be admitted to hospital after a fall and cut costs to the public purse.

Falls are said to cost the NHS more than £2 billion a year – the amount needed to plug the annual funding gap that councils face in adult social care by 2020. But Government funding restrictions are limiting the work that local councils can do.

Local Liberal Democrats believe many falls can be avoided and are calling for:
– Greater awareness raising among the public around fall prevention
– The Government to fully address the adult social care funding gap, which will reach more than £2 billion by 2020
– Adult social care to be put on an equal footing to the NHS

Latest figures from England in 2016/17, show there were 316,669 hospital admissions of people aged 65 and over due to falling, amounting to two thirds of all fall-related admissions. Around a fifth of these were as a result of slipping, tripping or stumbling.

Data sourced from a Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents’ analysis of Hospital Episode Statistics for England, published by NHS Digital. The figures relate to episodes of admitted patient care under a hospital consultant. More information: Get up and go guide to staying steady

PM must back Lib Dem NHS funding scheme

Theresa May has been making positive noises about funding the NHS properly recently – and if she wants to do that, then the Lib Dem plan is the best one out there.

Although it is a step in the right direction for Theresa May to take a long-term approach to funding the NHS, it is not clear whether the government will commit to new revenue streams to fund the health service.

This is despite the fact that over 100 MPs have taken the same view as the Liberal Democrats in backing an examination of a hypothecated tax, to protect the future of the NHS and social care.

We hope that the Prime Minister will take the first vital step by supporting the Liberal Democrat plan to raise essential extra revenue for the NHS and social care by putting up income tax by a penny in the pound.

Meanwhile, plans must be put in place to implement a hypothecated tax to secure long-term sustainable funding.

Greater Manchester Housing Update

Two important announcements in the last month about future housing construction in Greater Manchester.

The first is the publication, by the 10 Greater Manchester Councils (the Greater Manchester Strategic Authority, GMSA) of a detailed map of land identified for future housing and employment developments. The Councils estimate that this is potentially enough land for an extra 175,000 homes across greater Manchester over the next 20 years.

The Mayor said: “We’ve published this data so everyone can see the land we’ve identified for potential development. We’re now asking local people, community groups and others to take a look at these sites and let us know if there are any we have missed, or if there are other sites they think we should consider”.

The full map is available here. Most of these sites are what you might call ‘brownfield’ sites. For Bury, the heaviest concentration of them is in Radcliffe. Some of the sites (the East Lancashire Paper Mill site in Radcliffe, or the Cussons site in Rainsough) already have plans for housing. Some (land behind Tesco in Prestwich) are/have already being built on.

The second announcement is a deal that is being discussed  between the Government and Greater Manchester. Under the terms of the deal

  • Greater Manchester has to deliver on a Strategic Plan to provide land for 227,200 new homes over the next 19 years (to 2035). (To put that into context Bolton, Bury and Salford added together currently contain 283,000 homes.)
  • Greater Manchester would have ‘accelerated delivery’ getting up to 12,375 new houses a year (to put that into context that is a new Whitefield every year).

In return the Government will look at
Taking four Housing Infrastructure Fund Forward Funding bids through to co-development:
– Manchester’s Northern and Eastern Gateways;
– City Centre Salford Housing Growth Programme;
– Bolton and Wigan Key Route Network;
– South East Manchester Bus Rapid Transit Scheme.

–  Provide a Land Fund of up to £50m to provide support for the remediation of brownfield land for housing. The land fund should deliver at least 4200 homes and will be subject to value for money assurance.
– Provide up to £8m capacity funding to build the Greater Manchester Place Team to support the ambitious increase in housing delivery, building on the Manchester City Place team.
– Provide £10.25m to help regenerate the Collyhurst estate to deliver more affordable homes.

It is really important to notice that the current land identified has potential for 175,000 new homes, but the Council are committing to plan for 227,200 new homes. For us this rings massive alarm bells that the next draft of the Greater Manchester Strategic Framework being published (just after the local elections) in June 2018 will again include the destruction of Green Belt land (Draft 1 included massive loss of Green Belt in Prestwich, Whitefield, Unsworth and around Elton Reservoir).

So good news that so much brownfield land has been identified. Concern that the Councils are signing up to a plan that could see the Mayor going back on his pre-election promise of no net loss of Green Belt.

 

 

Every Child Empowered – An Education Revolution

We’ve just passed new policy that gives education in England the shake-up it sorely needs.

We’ve put up with a school system that fails our children and our wider economy for far too long. Today, we’re announcing plans to abolish Ofsted and shake up the way in which school and pupil performance is judged in England.

Our current system is completely outdated. We teach our students to remember facts and figures but not how to apply and adapt them, which in an AI world is sorely needed. We focus so much on high-stakes testing that we overlook other crucial areas of a child’s development, which has led to a mental health crisis in our schools and universities. It needs to change.

The Lib Dems will replace Ofsted with a new Inspector of Schools who will report on a broad array of qualities including pupil welfare, the promotion of equality of opportunity and teacher workload, sickness and retention, as well as attainment measures.

It’s also time to scrap KS1 and KS2 SATs to reduce the incredible pressure we put on our teachers and pupils. We want a revolutionary new system that focuses on moderated teacher assessment and light-touch testing.

We’ll equip the next generation for adult life – not just the “three Rs” but creativity and the arts, SRE, financial literacy and first aid skills, and completely rework the curriculum to recognise these values, empowering each individual child to be the best that they can and want to be.

£6 Billion Demanded for the NHS

The Liberal Democrats are calling for an extra £6 billion a year to protect the NHS, paid for by an extra penny on Income Tax. The money raised will be guaranteed for the NHS and social care services, which is currently in crisis with delayed operations, full hospital beds and record numbers left waiting in A and E.

The move was overwhelmingly supported by delegates at the Party’s recent Spring Conference.

Liberal Democrat Group Leader in Bury Councillor Tim Pickstone said: “Our NHS is at breaking point. With the Conservative Government planning even more cuts, our health service needs a necessary funding injection.

We are being honest with people and saying we all need to contribute a little more, with the money going direct to the NHS.

Our beloved health services are worth an extra 1p on income tax to ensure the safety of patients.”

Sir David Nicholson, who led NHS England for almost a decade, is among a group of senior health professionals and experts to back an increase in personal tax to provide the struggling services with an extra £6bn a year.

Tim concluded: “We must give our doctors and nurses the funding they need to continue providing a world-class health service.”

Housing and Local Government

We want a new housing revolution to fix our broken market – read more here.

We’re calling for a major overhaul of the powers of local councils to meet the goal of ensuring that everyone in Britain has a home.

The package, passed at Spring Conference in Southport, calls for new powers that will see local authorities able to build and invest in more affordable and social housing. This includes greater access to borrowing for local authorities, strengthened powers to bring empty homes back into use and the power to direct the use of otherwise unwanted public land. Alongside measures to allow local government to abandon Right to Buy and to require that profit from council house sales is invested in new social housing.

These proposals will empower local communities to provide the affordable and social housing that Britain needs and tackle the housing crisis head on.

Having a place to call home is a basic human right. In the face of a national housing crisis we’re failing as a country to fulfil that right. The private sector can’t be relied upon to deliver affordable homes for those struggling to get on the housing ladder.

Social housing is one of the pillars that underpin our welfare state. It’s a vital safety net for tens of thousands of families who can’t afford to rent privately, let alone ever buy their own homes. We need local government and housing associations to provide new social housing directly.

The Conservatives seem happy to just let social housing die. Their ideology is ownership and they don’t seem to see a need for social housing at all. It’s time to move away from providing shadowy land banking and towards greater housing provision.

We’re the only party empowering local councils and communities to provide the housing that is needed.

Reporting Back: Life after Walk-In Centres

The last month saw two opportunities for us to raise residents concerns about what will replace our Walk-In Centres in the revised package of ‘Urgent Care’ across the whole of Bury. The was the regular meeting of Bury Council’s Health Scrutiny Committee, and also a meeting of the Liberal Democrat Council Group with the CCG (Clinical Commissioning Group) Chair.

All areas are experiencing very high demand at hospital Accident and Emergency Department . The current estimate is that 30% of patients that visit A and E do not need to be at such an intensive service. The Government has new guidance for Urgent Care Services for the whole of England.

Bury will have just one Urgent Care Centre, which will be built adjacent to the Accident and Emergency Department at Fairfield General Hospital. (Manchester will be providing a similar Urgent Care Centre at North Manchester General Hospital.) The Urgent Care Centre has to have access to diagnostic services (e.g. X-Ray) which means it realistically does have to be on the hospital site which is where this equipment is. Being next to A and E will help reduce the number of people who currently attend A and E for more routine urgent needs, which can be dealt with at the Urgent Care Centre.

The full urgent care service across Bury will be:

Pharmacy – there will normally be a consulting room were the pharmacist can give advice and propose medication etc for minor ailments and wounds etc.
GP Surgery – All of the current services will be provided.
Integrated Health and Social Care Hub – initially three (Prestwich, Bury and Radcliffe, but eventually one in each township area)  – A mixture of Medical professional will be based in the Hub.  This will allow patient to have face to face advice from a GP. This will also allow elderly and vulnerable patients with complex issues to be seen in the local community, and will reduce hospital visits.
Urgent Treatment centre – will be located at the hospital in a separate building along side A & E.
A and E – Will treat all emergencies.

We asked a lot of questions about the Integrated Health and Social Care Hub, which will be replacing the Walk-In Centres at Prestwich and Moorgate in Bury, with a new one in Radcliffe. What was clear to us is that the Hub will be very different from the current Walk-In Centre which has general ‘walk-in’ access to Senior level of Nurse. In the future there will be some element of ‘walk-in access’ to the services at the Hub – e.g. GP appointments, this will not be particularly advertised or promoted and access to services by phone will be the preferred route. It was hoped that some of the clinics and other services that currently take place in Outpatients Departments in hospitals could take place at the Hubs, which means less trips to hospital for some people with longer term health needs.

We raised a concern that the some in the media were being too simplistic saying that Walk-In Centres have been ‘saved’ and will continue as they are now in the future, which is clearly not the case. Bringing local services together under one roof at the ‘Hub’ is a good idea, but it is certainly not the Walk-In Centre we currently have. It is important to note that the Hub will only be for people who are register with a GP in the Borough of Bury, so will not be for people who are registered with GPs outside of Bury.

Another big change proposed is access to services by telephone. The first number that people in Bury will be encouraged to phone is their GP practice where staff will be able to take calls to guide the patient to the appropriate medical professional. Outside working hours this number will be redirected to a 24/7 number. We asked questions of the CCG about the capacity of reception staff in GP practices to help people in this way and how staff would be trained to be able deal with a variety of issues. We also asked about confidentiality in GP practices (e.g. where the phone is answered next to the waiting room).

The 111 phone number will be still available if you need advice on such things as urgent dental appointment, the availability of pharmacy out of hours etc

Hope this information is useful please get in touch if you want more information. More details too at these FAQs from the CCG.

School Reform Package Proposed

The Liberal Democrats have launched a package of education reforms that would inject greater parental and teacher trust in the English schools system.

The education reforms proposed include:
-Replacing Ofsted with a reformed independent schools inspectorate system that assesses teacher and pupil well-being, as well as results, and a focus on whether school leaders can deliver future improvement
Replacing league tables with a broader set of indicators, including qualitative data on pupil well-being
– Qualitative information would come from getting pupil and parent feedback on how well a school is doing, as well as looking at indicators such as what happens to a pupil when they’ve left a school, like attaining university places
Scrapping mandatory Sats for years two and six and replacing with moderated teacher assessment and lighter-touch testing
– A ‘curriculum for life’ that includes relationships and sex education, financial literacy and first aid
Establishing a specific individual responsible for mental health in schools to help children
An end to Conservative cuts to education, such as protecting per-pupil spending in real terms, including in further education

Liberal Democrat leader Vince Cable said:
“Children must have a well-rounded education and our systems should not just be tick-box exercises. The Gove revolution has produced a Dickensian approach to education. We need to take account of information from teachers, parents and children views as part of improved qualitative and quantitative assessments of our schools.”

Liberal Democrat Education Spokesperson Layla Moran said:
“The over-emphasis on high stakes testing has meant the system has overlooked so many other elements of the development of the child. Parents want to know there children’s well-being is looked after and that they are taught lessons for life, such as first aid and financial literacy, and have the prospects to succeed.

“We need inspectorate and league table systems that recognise these values, in addition to looking at exam and test marks in maths and English.”

Survey shows growing public anger at Conservatives’ mishandling of Brexit

More and more people are getting tired of the Conservatives mishandling of Brexit. It’s why we need a referendum on the deal.

A survey by Kantar Public, published today (Sunday, 18 February), has found that 56% of the public judge the Conservatives’ handling of Berexit as poor or very poor.

Whether people are for or against Brexit, there is clearly growing anger that the Conservatives are badly mishandling negotiations.

Warring factions in the Conservative Party mean the prospect of sensible negotiations has long since disappeared.

This is why there is growing support for the Liberal Democrat policy of a vote on the terms of the deal, with the option of an exit from Brexit.

Reporting Back: Budget Setting Council

Last week was Bury’s annual ‘Budget Council’. This is the meeting of all 51 councillors where the Budget for 2018-19 is set, including the all important council tax rates from April.

The proposals of the majority Labour Group were voted through.  This is a Council Tax rise of 5.94% from 1 April 2018. The actual rise for residents will be about 6.35% when you add in the Council Tax charges from the Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham. 

The Liberal Democrat Councillors voted AGAINST this budget. This is a rise of practically 17% in three years which we were not prepared to accept.

The increase is made up of a basic increase of 2.94%, plus a further 3% ‘social care levy’. This is the maximum increased any Council is allowed by Government without a referendum.  There are then the areas of Council Tax set by the Greater Manchester Mayor (Police, Fire, and a new Mayoral Precept to pay for the office of the Mayor). When the increases are taken into account the increase is around 6.35%. The Council Tax rates from 1 April 2018 are below.

The budget included very significant cuts to services – £32 million over three years – but with precious little actual detail on what these might mean. The Government continues to make life very difficult for local councils, with huge cuts in funding every year, but we feel that the Council should be more up front with residents about what savings are required and what choices need to be made. The bulk of the extra 1% of council tax rise proposed by the Labour group was to go on Children’s social care costs, which have been under extreme pressure recently.

What did Liberal Democrat councillors do? 
The Liberal Democrat Group voted against the budget. Although we recognise that so much money has to be saved we felt that we couldn’t vote for £32 million of cuts when we didn’t know what they would mean to ordinary people and we couldn’t support such a huge increase in Council Tax.

We did propose changes to the budget: 
– More money to tackle litter and dog fouling with more bins for streets and parks.
– £500,000 to ‘kickstart’ the recently announced Prestwich Town Centre Challenge regeneration programme. In Prestwich we’re fed-up of hearing promises that the village centre will be improved and we need to put some money behind the plans to bring in further investment.
– £10 million pounds to fix potholes and roads, over three years, so desperately needed. At present Council’s have access to very cheap borrowing rates AND we currently spend nearly £1 million each year on dealing with compensation claims for poor road surfaces. We would rather spend that money on FIXING the roads!

Our proposals to fix roads and invest in Prestwich were defeated with every single Labour and Conservative Councillor voting against. 

Hope this information is useful. Your comments and views are always welcome and appreciated. 

The papers for the budget meeting are here.

Council Tax for 2018/19 is: (current year in brackets)

Band A – £1,165.91 (£1,096.26)
Band B – £1,360.24 (£1,278.98)
Band C – £1,554.55 (£1,461.69)
Band D – £1,748.89 (£1,644.41)
Band E – £2,137.52 (£2,009.83)
Band F – £2,526.16 (£2,375.26)
Band G – £2,914.80  (£2,740.67)
Band H – £3,497.76 (£3,288.81)