Trafford council’s health boss has said the government needs to provide ‘more information’ on how the new health system will work next year amid a major overhaul.
The national move to get rid of Clinical Commissioning Groups, currently responsible for managing and allocating NHS resources locally, and creating One Board systems, in which former CCGs and local authorities will work together to manage NHS resources in their areas, is due to come into force from March 2022.
But one concerned member of the public tabled a question at last night’s Trafford council executive meeting asking how the new system, which she said ‘lacked accountability’, would be of benefit to the borough.
They said: “As a resident and a taxpayer in Trafford, what are the benefits for the people of Trafford from the adoption of the one system board? There appears to be very little accountability to us.
“Why support a One Board system for Trafford that has no power to make policy decisions for Trafford residents that you represent?”
Responding, Coun Jane Slater, the council’s executive member for health, said: “You’ll be aware of the national changes happening in the NHS into the Integrated Care system. It’s a national change, it isn’t something that we’ve decided to do locally.
“I think anybody who decided to change how we run our NHS in a pandemic; I don’t think that’s something that Trafford would have been wanting to do, but it was the government deciding that we will be changing how we run our NHS so that’s what we’ve had to start doing.”
Coun Slater added the council is waiting on personnel advice from national government to come through so the authority can begin a public consultation on the plans as soon as possible.
She added: “I’ve been in a trade union for 32 years. I wouldn’t want to see the privatisation of our NHS. I agree with a lot of the things that you are concerned about as Trafford residents and yes, we do need more information.
“Unfortunately we haven’t got that at this point in time and once we do, we will be sharing that more widely.”
Councils up and down the country are still waiting on changes to the law necessary for this new system to be completed before they can progress any further with the plans.
In Trafford, the authority has set up a shadow one board system that is currently running alongside its usual CCG operations and will continue to do so until March 2022 when CCGs are due to come to an end.
