Bedford to miss out on GP expansion

A stagnation of health facilities in the borough will not be helped by a proposal to remove support for GP surgery expansion, a meeting heard.

During Bedford Borough Council’s full meeting on Wednesday (January 11) councillor Dean Crofts (Lib Dems, Kingsbrook) asked the mayor for his reaction to the Primary Care Commissioning & Assurance Committee Extraordinary Meeting held earlier that day.

“[Can you give] your reaction to today’s news that the proposed expansion schemes for GPs at Wootton, Wixams, Shortstown, Harrold and Queen’s Park will now not be supported by the ICB [integrated care board],” he asked.

Bedford mayor, Dave Hodgson, said: “We have seen, as we all know, a large growth in our population, and at best a stagnation of our health service facilities.

“We had some work jointly funded by the NHS and ourselves to look at what [health] facilities were available.

“It said that we were 40% under provided for, 40% less space than we need, that was three years ago and it has not got better,” he said.

The mayor told the meeting in September 2021 the council’s Health and Wellbeing Board was presented a report to share the planned NHS provision for the borough.

“We’re going to have the full works of everything for the De Parys Group by 22/23, the Kempston Hub was going to be completed by 22/23 – we haven’t seen an outline business case,” he said.

“The ward councillors will be interested to know the Biddenham Primary Care Hub site was going to be completed in the last financial year, I’m not sure there’s a foundation laid yet, is there?

“And then we have Wootton Health Centre, I mean I really worry about the Wootton Health Centre, I do think if you lean on it it might fall over and that was going to be completed last financial year and we can go on,” he said.

Councillor Crofts said: “The ICB admitted today, it will cost them an extra approximately £3 million to do all the schemes that they’re not supporting.

“I just do not understand their decision today when we’re talking about £3 million from a £1.7 billion budget, it just does not make sense,” he said.

The portfolio holder for health and wellbeing, councillor Louise Jackson (Labour, Harpur) said: “Something has got to change, because if we don’t invest in our primary care estates and our acute sector then we’re going to keep finding ourselves in this firefighting present position every time we get to winter.

“When we haven’t got enough services in the community to keep people well and keep people out of hospital

“We are spending far too much on expensive acute care when we could be caring for people at home and in the community and keeping people well and helping them to live longer healthier lives.

“Rather than being ill and transferring in and out of our acute services all of the time.

“I think we’ve got our priorities wrong nationally, and we need to shift to a more preventative focus and really invest in our very under-resourced NHS and our estates,” she said.