LEADERS of Shropshire Council have taken their concerns about health care in Ludlow and south Shropshire to Whitehall.

The leaders of Shropshire Council and Telford & Wrekin Council met Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt MP to express their concern over the ‘disarray’ in Shropshire’s local NHS and the risks that this poses to local communities.

Jeremy Hunt is the boss of Ludlow MP Philip Dunne who is a health minister.

At the meeting, Councillor Malcolm Pate and Cllr Shaun Davies stressed serious shortcomings in an overarching plan to transform and make financially sustainable NHS healthcare across Shropshire.

The plan, called the Sustainability and Transformation Plan was published before Christmas and recognised by NHS England as focusing too much on emergency hospital services reconfiguration on which the county’s two Clinical Commissioning Groups could not agree when they met in December.

The STP was also criticised by the leaders of both councils who said it didn’t address community-based care and keeping people out of hospital.

Cllrs Pate and Davies told Jeremy Hunt that investment in community-based approaches could substantially reduce demand on hospital services and ultimately save the NHS money by keeping people well.

They stressed that Shropshire Clinical Commissioning Group being under ‘Directions’ and needing to save just over £20 million could put community approaches at risk due to potential disinvestment in community interventions that could lead to greater savings further down the line.

Clive Wright, chief executive of Shropshire Council was also at the meeting.

“Shropshire’s local NHS is in disarray,” said Malcolm Pate, leader of Shropshire Council.

“The approach in our plan of redesigning and investing in acute services before community services makes no sense.

“It is the wrong way around – putting the cart before the horse. And the process of redesigning hospital services has been cumbersome, costly and ineffective and has become a point of ridicule locally.

“There is no confidence in the process or leadership locally. This needs immediate external, government intervention to properly set out and implement a process of change, engagement, consultation and implementation.”