DISMAL LACK OF KNOWLEDGE
BOARD SHOULD TAKE BLAME
THE article a week ago about the financial problems of East Cheshire NHS Trust (ECNT) made depressing reading but was hardly a surprise.
One cannot help but feel sympathy for the Trust’s CEO John Wilbraham, who appears to be carrying the can.
When a situation is as serious as the one he described, I think we really need the Chairman of the Board to be “front and centre” not the senior officer who has the task of implementing what the board determines.
I suspect we are seeing a rerun of the events a decade ago when a group of Manchester hospitals got together to determine which ones should do what and particularly which ones should no longer provide maternity and paediatrics.
Macclesfield had never been a part of the Manchester hospital set-up, it had always been a part of Mersey region, so it was a surprise to learn that our local hospital was even involved in this review but it came as no surprise that the Manchestercentric organisation chose Macclesfield as the hospital to lose its maternity and children’s services.
Had this happened we would not now have a hospital as if we cannot treat pregnant women and children then one cannot have an A&E, as behind the front door there would be no expertise in these departments.
This came just a few years after mental health services were hived off to a Chester-based trust, albeit the services it now provides are at least in part still based in Macclesfield hospital (but not managed or provided by ECNT).
This was the first blow in unpicking Macclesfield and went right against the efforts of the board I had chaired, which showed no distinction between mental and physical services hence them all being brought together on one site when Parkside (mental health hospital) was closed in the 1990s.
Times change and organisations are regularly upheaved and one cannot stop it all but this question has been asked: “What should Macclesfield General hospital provide?”
The answer is in the title, it is a GENERAL hospital, it does not specialise in anything but it is acknowledged that not everything can be provided by all hospitals.
I suggest that services for pregnant women and for the children they give birth to are CORE and should be provided by any hospital calling itself GENERAL and particularly any which serves almost half a million people.
The changes made to the NHS in 2007 can now be seen to have further muddied waters already cloudy from previous changes, resulting in a strange concoction of private and public providers with no clear dividing line between them.
There are too many NHS quangos, whatever they may be called, and too many administrators.
The NHS is not short of money of course; it pays many of its senior managers far too much and does not use its massive purchasing power to get better deals on what it buys. It has created apparently stand-alone hospital trusts which immediately get together to carve up what they are separately responsible for and end up with semi-internal turf wars instead of doing what they were set up to do.
The solution to Macclesfield’s problem may no longer exist in the town or within the power of the board of the ECNT but with other parts of the NHS monolith which can only be determined by politicians. So when our local ones are back from holiday I suggest they get together and then use their influence to ensure the excellent hospital we have in Macclesfield is sufficiently funded to provide all the services associated with a GENERAL hospital and not allowed to be over-ruled or undermined from outside. Peter Hayes Former Chairman, East Cheshire NHS Trust(1990-2000) and its predecessor Macclesfield District Health Authority
ONLY THE FEW WILL BENEFIT
CHESHIRE East’s Strategic Planning Committee has approved King’s School’s planning applications despite the fact that they do not comply with council policy on affordable housing in either number or type.
King’s can only afford to provide 10 per cent of housing at a discount, whereas policy seeks 30pc of social housing to rent or on shared ownership schemes. King’s will only offer one third of what is expected. Hence Macclesfield’s social housing needs remain grossly underfunded.
The council has in effect agreed to subsidise King’s new school to the extent of several millions of pounds at the expense of both those who need housing and the taxpayer.
Furthermore the council appear in a great rush to approve these plans in advance of the next phase of inspection of the Local Plan, due to start in just six weeks.
There have been hundreds of objections to the use of the greenbelt sites and those objections must be considered by the Inspector when the hearings re open.
If it’s OK to approve building on these sites proposed in the Local Plan, why have the commercial developers not submitted their plans for thousands of houses proposed for the South West Macc sites?
They appear to believe the inspection process has teeth and will be spending heavily on barristers to present their case. If the inspection process has no relevance then the council can save tens of thousand of pounds of our money by not appointing its own barristers to sit through days of a toothless enquiry process.
Teresa May has committed herself to govern in the interests of the many rather than the few.
Conservative led Cheshire East has yet to hear this message, ignoring the many and subsidising the few. Keith Williams Macclesfield I ATTENDED the SPB meeting when the three King’s School applications were all approved by the committee. After a five-for, five-against tie the chairman used his casting vote.
I was dismayed at the lack of knowledge displayed by some councillors but more so by officers’ inability to provide the needed information, to find their way round their own documents and give clear answers to councillors’ questions. This resulted in a damning retort from one member.
Consequently a lack of understanding by out of area councillors of the current housing status and requirements for Macclesfield and gripes about the distribution of housing affecting the south of the borough contributed to the balance in approving.
Our excellent local councillors, with the backing from Prestbury Parish and Macclesfield Town Councils, voiced their concerns and debated the issues on how the developments would affect our town.
And so a private school’s business needs, which was not planning policy compliant in providing for adequate affordable housing and contribution for education, was voted as the very special circumstances for releasing the green belt.
Another example of where the few, not the many will benefit. Pam Upchurch Macclesfield