Last week, saw the bombshell announcement from our health authority, Bedfordshire, Luton and Milton Keynes, Integrated Care Board that they will not be proceeding with the health and care hubs in Leighton Buzzard and Houghton Regis. The one in Dunstable opens in the spring, thanks to the efforts of Central Bedfordshire Council, who built it and Bedfordshire Hospitals Trust who have taken the head lease on it. The worst patient to GP ratios locally are in Dunstable. I want a similar hub in all three of the towns that it is my enormous privilege to represent.
The other outrageous decision was not to proceed with the Clipstone Park GP surgery in Leighton Buzzard. This is, despite of the fact that a GP surgery was part of the planning application for Clipstone Park. The delivery of a GP surgery has also been clearly on the Clipstone Park website hosted by Taylor Wimpey, Barratts, and David Wilson Homes. There are 6000 new houses being built to the east of Leighton Buzzard, and the population of the town has grown by around 15,000 since the turn of the century. There are 8,000 new homes being built north of Houghton Regis in Bidwell West and Linmere. Houghton Regis will in time be larger than both Leighton Buzzard and Linslade and Dunstable.
Our most local hospital, the Luton and Dunstable, which is still 11 miles from Leighton Buzzard, is in the middle of £168 million rebuild which is excellent for local people and all who work there. General practice and primary care need to expand as well because the current surgeries are overloaded and the additional GPs and practice nurses and the wider primary care team cannot work on the side of the road. There are 4,000 newly qualified doctors from last year training to be GPs, a record number and they need somewhere to go and BLMK turned away eight of them recently because there wasn’t anywhere for them to work.
If I hear the government refer one more time to waiting lists, just referring to hospitals I will be having a very direct conversation with the Health and Social Care Secretary. What about the wait at 8 o’clock every morning to try to get a GP appointment only to to be offered an appointment weeks ahead? The GPs and practice staff we have are fantastic, but they cannot look after an additional 33,000 new residents without additional colleagues and somewhere for them to work.
The whole point of an integrated care board is that these decisions taken by BLMK are taken with the local authorities, and I know that Central Bedfordshire Council feel they were blindsided by the decision taken on Wednesday last week not to proceed with our primary care growth plans. BLMK have a budget of £1.7 billion and they are saying they cannot find £2.9 million to proceed with the primary care expansion needed across the whole of Bedfordshire, Luton and Milton Keynes. Why not open up their books and let local people decide on the prioritisation of the £1.7 billion budget? I strongly suspect that general practice would get greater priority.
And there is absolutely work for the government to do because I am fed up to the back teeth of health being the poor relation when we build new housing estates. I have rarely had a child unable to get a school place and yet I have tens of thousands of constituents who cannot get a doctor’s appointment in a timely fashion. Figures I obtained from the House of Commons Library this week, show that of £7 billion of money provided by housebuilders for local facilities less than £187 million went towards health which is completely unacceptable and I have told the government must change immediately. I am really angry about all of this and I will fight until we get a just outcome.