Healthcare Features
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- Written by: Sean Clement
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The NHS Commercial Procurement Collaborative (NHS CPC) has fired the gun on the procurement exercise for a legal services framework agreement worth up to £50m over a four-year period.
Read more: NHS procurement body puts up to £50m in legal work up for grabs
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Gloucestershire NHS is to reverse controversial plans to outsource eight community hospitals and health services, along with their 3,000 nurses and other health workers.
Gloucestershire Primary Care Trust had planned to create England’s largest transfer out of the NHS through the move to a community interest company but was successfully challenged by local campaigners.
The board of NHS Gloucestershire has just voted instead to create a new standalone NHS trust, rejecting other options it had been considering of opening up the local health services to bids from the private sector.
The move follows a hard-fought 18 month campaign by campaigners across the county. This included a High Court challenge against the Primary Care Trust’s outsourcing plans by local resident Michael Lloyd who argued that NHS options for services had not properly been considered. His lawyers, Leigh Day & Co, obtained a court order in February 2012 halting the proposed outsourcing and requiring NHS Gloucestershire to consider NHS options.
In May, health ministers conceded that creating an NHS Trust was an option, and that there was no legal requirement on local health bosses to put services up for tender. The local PCT accepted the view of the ministers. The court order had also required NHS Gloucestershire to consult staff and the public. These consultations resulted in 91 per cent of staff and 96 per cent of the public voting for the services to be run by an NHS Trust.
Michael Lloyd said “I am delighted by today’s decision..... The public, and the staff who provide my healthcare, should have been consulted in the first place, so I’m very pleased that our voices have been listened to at last.”
Neasa MacErlean
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The first charity to be fined by the Information Commissioner’s Office for a breach of data protection laws has hit out at the £70,000 penalty as “disproportionate” and reserved the right to appeal the amount.
Read more: Charity hits out at ICO fine for data breach and reserves right to appeal
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The Information Commissioner’s Office has expressed concern at standards of data protection compliance within local government, saying that governance in particular is a common area for improvement.
Read more: ICO audits reveal governance failings in local authority data protection