More cash needed to improve GP access in Bedford - instead of just "shuffling rooms"

A lack of funding means the NHS is “just shuffling rooms” instead of providing the space needed to improve primary care access, Bedford’s mayor has said.

Earlier this year, Bedfordshire, Luton & Milton Keynes Integrated Care Board (BLMK ICB) announced that its £1.95m of additional funding will enable 23 primary care projects to progress, including eight in Bedford borough.

At Wednesday’s (March 15) Health and Wellbeing Board Bedford mayor, Dave Hodgson asked how much extra space would be generated by these eight schemes.

In January the ICB said it missed out on trainee GPs due to a lack of available space.

“Apart from Biddenham, it’s probably a reduction,” the mayor said.

“Because if you look we’ve moved stuff from Cater Street, from St John’s Surgery, from Rothesay, so a number of places have closed.

“We’ve taken some mental health primary care space to give it to London Road, so we’ve reduced primary care mental health, and likewise in other facilities.

“We’re actually just shuffling rooms around as opposed to the jointly funded work we and the CCG did that said we had a 40 per cent under provision.

“In that time, we’ve grown by about eight per cent in population, and I will suggest that if there has been an increase in primary care space it has been minimal.

“And nowhere near keeping up with the growth of our population, let alone the deficit in primary care space,” he said.

Nicky Poulain, BLMK ICB’s chief primary care officer, said: “It’s about how we can re-utilize the space.

“That’s where some of that funding is used – to do some jiggery pokery within practices to [better utilise] the actual space,” she said.

Nikki Barnes, head of system & ICB estates, said: “As we’ve all acknowledged, it’s a really challenging system for us with a lack of a primary care capital funding stream coming down from central government.

“We do have to be really innovative, really tenacious, to be able to deliver some of our primary care estates schemes.”

Ms Barnes said that a lack of funding meant that 30 schemes across BLMK were unable to be supported “at this stage”.

“There are further conversations underway to consider alternative opportunities and partnership approaches to consider how we might be able to progress some of those schemes,” she added.

Committee chair, councillor Louise Jackson (Labour, Harpur) said the secretary of state needs to be asked to “unstick” more funding.

“Because without it, you’ll only ever going to be tinkering around the edges,” she said.

“I don’t think you’re ever going to get to a point where you’re going to be able to deliver truly transformational multidisciplinary teams.

“We really do need [them] here in Bedford borough to serve our population and keep them out of the hospital.

“We want to keep people out of hospital, keep them well and serve their needs as close to the place that they call home as we can,” she said.