Issue - meetings

The Panel considered the report of the Chair of the Health Overview and Scrutiny Panel setting out the health and care proposal for the 2017-2018 municipal year, for discussion.

John Richards (Chief Executive Officer, NHS Southampton City CCG), 

Stephanie Ramsey (Director of Quality and Integration), Paul Juan

(Acting Service Director Adults, Housing and Communities), Councillor Dave Shields (Cabinet Member for Health and Sustainable Living), and Abelardo Clariana-Piga (Southampton Keep Our NHS Public) were in attendance and, with the consent of the Chair, addressed the meeting.

The Panel discussed a number of matters and concerns including:

·  the lack of alignment with the financial systems within the Council and the health service;

·  the need to ensure that proposals should be:

o  properly planned for;

o  assessed; and

o  realistic;

·  the requirement for a health impact assessment for all proposed savings;

·  the dangers of displacing the costs of a service, and the ultimate escalation of the financial burden to both the Council and its partners, in the health system locally, that the proposed reductions would have.

RESOLVED that the Panel agreed that the Chair of the Panel be requested to co-ordinate and collate an official response to the Council’s budget consultation.  It was agreed that this would clearly set out concerns raised at the meeting in regard to:

·  the displacement of costs to other organisations within the local health system;

·  the potential for escalating costs that cuts relating to prevention would have;

·  the scale and pace of the proposed changes, in particular changes to the provision of substance misuse prevention, where the Panel were concerned that a saving had been identified with no clear plan to address this shortfall; and

·  the need for health impact assessments and the inclusion, within the existing impact assessments, of the potential cost implications the proposals could have on the public sector in Southampton