Future Fit: Review into Shropshire programme finally under way
An independent review into the Future Fit programme which was set up to decide where hospital services for Shropshire are located is at last under way.
Under the proposals the county’s main acute A&E unit could be set up at Royal Shrewsbury Hospital and the current A&E at Telford’s Princess Royal Hospital’s downgraded to urgent care centre status.
But Telford & Wrekin Council has threatened legal action over the proposal and it was agreed that a major review of how the decision-making process was done should be carried out.
Now consultants KPMG have been appointed to deliver a report into the process that was launched more than three years ago at a cost of several million pounds.
A meeting of the GP-led Telford & Wrekin clinical commissioning group (CCG), which provides the borough’s health services, was told that the agency has four weeks to complete its review and that a public consultation on Future Fit will be launched by the end of August.
The CCG’s chief officer David Evans said: “An independent review started yesterday and is due to be completed by mid-July and will be brought to the board in due course.
“They will start talking to some of the stakeholders.
“The programme board will meet to look at the action plan and any concerns the impact on the timeline for the independent review will have on the integrated impact assessment and it is anticipated that on a fair wind it is likely to go to a joint committee at the end of July and out to public consultation by the end of August.”
The CCG has made two failed attempts to put the the review out to tender and has now appointed KPMG to deliver it within a month.
A decision was taken by the Future Fit board last year to retain the current A&E unit at the RSH as its preferred option, but Telford & Wrekin Council threatened legal action and it was decided that a review should be taken into how the decision making process was carried out.
Following this review, the plans are expected to go to public consultation and a final decision will then be made. There has been concerns about the delay in the time table and its impact on the public consultation exercise which will not now start until early autumn.
