Cumbria Health Scrutiny Committee

Yesterday was the February 2019 meeting of the Cumbria Health Scrutiny Committee, which is the joint committee of County Councillors and District or Borough councillors responsible for democratic scrutiny and challenge of the NHS in the county of Cumbria

The meeting was held at County Hall in Kendal from 10.30 am and was open to the public (in fact one member of the public did attend.) The agenda and reports for the meeting are available as in due course the minutes will be when they are published and can be read here.

There was far too much important material on the agenda to do justice to it in a single post. I will make a couple of general observations and will then make follow-up points on some of the important issues discussed, starting with a very important report on cancer care which I will post about tomorrow.

1) All seven representatives of the County Council attended but, despite the importance of the items on the agenda, only one of the six representatives of the six city, district or borough councils was there. I'll not do a "name and shame" on this occasion as I am told that at least one of the absent district councillors is unwell, and to be fair the individual concerned does usually attend. 

But there are signs of a pattern of non-attendance from some district representatives. The worst offenders are, I'm told, stepping down rather than re-standing in the local elections this May. If the problem continues after May I will start calling it out.

2) The committee venue alternates between Carlisle and Kendal. This meeting was discussing an agenda which was almost entirely about healthcare in the North Cumbria area but the meeting took place at the venue in the south of the county. 

County Councillors should of course attend wherever in the county the meeting is held and whatever part of the authority area is on the agenda, but from the point of view of being accessible to members of the public, and saving the time of the NHS officials who come to the meetings as witnesses, it would be helpful to optimise which items come to the committee at which venues. Ironically the one member of the press and public who did attend lives in Copeland: in this particular case we could have saved an hour or so of the valuable time of all the NHS witnesses, all of whom are very busy people, if we'd held this particular meeting in Carlisle.

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