Agenda and minutes

Councillors and officers were invited to declare any interests they had in any of the items on the agenda for the meeting.

The following interests were declared:-

Personal Interests

There were no call-in items to consider.

The purpose of the extra-ordinary meeting is to scrutinise the situation with estates at Stepping Hill Hospital and to understand how this is impacting on patients and staff and the Trust’s ability to deliver services.

The Chief Executive and Director of Estates & Facilities at Stockport NHS Foundation Trust attended the meeting to respond to questions from the Scrutiny Committee relating to the estates situation at Stepping Hill Hospital and to understand how this was impacting on patients and staff and the Trust’s Ability to deliver services

The Cabinet Member for Health & Adult Social Care (Councillor Keith Holloway) attended the meeting to respond to questions from the Scrutiny Committee.

The Chief Executive provided the following introduction:-

·         Stockport hospital was quite an old hospital with the main façade going back to 1905. This means that it has a number of issues with trying to maintain the site, with other buildings being over 50 years old and requires maintenance as well.

·         A lot of the estate has been categorised as C and D, which means that it is in a really poor state and have to be structurally surveyed on a regular basis to ensure that services could continue to be provided from the accommodation.

·         As a result of the building surveys, Outpatient B was categorised as D, being in the poorest estate which meant it has to be immediately evacuated and then demolished.

·         Alternative accommodation has had to be sought for patients and services across the site.

·         The estate itself is landlocked, which makes it very difficult to manage the ever-increasing demand for hospital services.

·         Each year capital monies are allocated to the hospital but this also has to be used for maintenance, IT infrastructure and the replacement of equipment. There is already a backlog of maintenance problems, so risk assessments have to be undertaken across the site.

·         As a result of the backlog of maintenance issues and the facilities no longer being conducive to modern medicine the hospital and the local authority have been working together to develop an outline business case to replace a substantial element of the Stockport site and has already been submitted to the Department of Health as part of their new hospital build scheme, however, it was shortlisted but not categorised as one of the most urgent.

The following comments were made/issues raised:-

·         Members sought clarification on the impact of services across the hospital. In response, it was stated that the majority of services were still provided on site, but there was limited capacity which resulted in sourcing capacity close to the hospital so patients are not inconvenienced too much. Patients are then communicated with in advance to ensure they know where they are going to receive their services across the site and this is done on a 6-week cycle.

·         Members enquired about the communication strategy in place. In response, it was noted that the hospital links with patient groups and ensure that the patient letters were clear regarding where they need to go and where eon the site the services would be provided.

·         Clarification was sought regarding the timescales for the existing work being carried out at the hospital. In response it was noted that discussions were ongoing with the national team about the options of funding and it was anticipated that within the next 15 months there should be a solution.

·         That there were ongoing assessments taking place across the site to include electrics, piping, the physical infrastructure, drainage and everything related to the building estate. Following these assessments further additional measures are taken to ‘sense check’ the assessments at regular intervals. The information is then fed into the Trust’s Governance processes, for example, the risk register, applications for funding from the internal capital.

·         It was commented that the Trust was in the process of making the decisions to spend what little capital was available in order to prevent or affect patient outcomes as little as possible.

·         In the short term some of the outpatient capacity was being provided off site but near to the hospital. However, if capital was to become available then quite a bit of the  ...  view the full minutes text for item 3.