Re-locating Peterborough walk-in centre shows ‘disregard for the public’

In a letter sent to the Peterborough Telegraph, the party’s group leader on the city council Cllr Nick Sandford, and health spokesperson Cllr Simon Barkham, have called for an extraordinary scrutiny meeting to be held over the issue.

As reported by the PT last week, the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) agreed to transfer the Urgent Treatment Centre and the GP Out of Hours services from the City Care Centre in Thorpe Road to the hospital in Bretton despite 62 per cent of respondents to a public consultation stating their opposition to the proposals.

The re-location was due to take place before the winter but will now not occur before April 2021.

It will mean an end to emergency health provision in the city centre but will provide a single point of care for patients which will operate 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

It is hoped this will help reduce the numbers visiting the city hospital’s Emergency Department as patients can be re-directed to a different service in the same building.

Patients visiting the hospital in Bretton will be met by a trained clinician who will direct them to the most appropriate service, while appointments can also be pre-booked.

In their letter to the PT, Cllrs Sandford and Barkham, who are both members of the council’s Health Scrutiny Committee, said: “The text responses to the survey tell us that people think that the City Care Centre on Thorpe Road is a much more accessible venue than the Peterborough City Hospital site due to its central location, proximity to the bus station and public transport links.

“We think it is important that public bodies spending millions of pounds of public funds show clearly that they are accountable to members of the public and are responsive to their views.

“This decision clearly shows that the CCG is failing that test and it will just reinforce the view that the consultation was merely a box-ticking exercise designed to ratify a decision that had already been made. Is it any wonder that people become cynical about consultations and decision making processes in our public services?

“We have called for an extraordinary meeting of the council’s Health Scrutiny Committee so that we can ask the CCG to explain their apparent disregard for the views of the public.”

In a statement issued last week, Dr Gary Howsam, chair of the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Clinical Commissioning Group, said: “We’re very grateful to our community who shared their feedback and we plan to re-locate the Urgent Treatment Centre to Peterborough City Hospital sometime next year.

“We have listened to the concerns raised by the public through the consultation process and agreed that the re-location will not happen until at least April 1, 2021.

“Moving these services to one place will now mean people only need to travel to one location for their urgent and emergency health needs, rather than trying to work out which service is the right one for them.

“This additional timescale also gives us more time to plan the building work and for more work to be done, working with the North West Anglia NHS Foundation Trust and Peterborough City Council on sustainable travel plans for this area.”