News story

15th July 2005

Update on Frenchay Hospital from Steve Webb

There has been considerable concern about the way in which the decision to downgrade Frenchay Hospital was taken. Many local people feel that the strong concerns of many in South Gloucestershire about the loss of this acute hospital were not properly taken account of, and that the needs of the people of South Gloucestershire as a whole will not be well served by the proposed new arrangements.

I share many of these concerns, and whilst I do not wish to see any unnecessary delay in the modernisation that our hospitals surely need, I took the view that this decision needed to be looked at by an independent body.

I therefore wrote to the members of South Gloucestershire Council's Health Scrutiny Committee to urge them to ask the Secretary of State for Health to investigate the Frenchay decision by referring it to a body specially set up to look into disputed changes to local health services such as this - the "Independent Reconfiguration Panel" (IRP). Last week I attended a five hour meeting of the Council's committee and made my case, as did the Chief Executives of the local NHS Trusts. By a majority of nine to zero, with one abstention, councillors decided to accept my recommendation and to refer this matter to the Secretary of State.

I have now had a meeting with the Secretary of State for Health, where I urged her to agree to the Council's request.  I am expecting her to make a decision on this by the end of the month.

If the process goes ahead, the IRP will take a period of around three months to investigate the decision that has been taken, not least by visiting our area and talking to local people, and will report back to the Secretary of State.

I believe that this is an important decision. It certainly does not mean that Frenchay has been "saved", though it does offer at the very least a "stay of execution". More importantly, I believe it could offer the opportunity for a body independent of the Trusts themselves to take a look at how this decision was made and to judge whether it has been done properly. Naturally, I will keep my constituents posted on any major developments on this front.