Adur councillors call for new NHS Sussex plan to be more ambitious

The council agreed a motion to acknowledge ‘unprecedented’ waiting times, to lobby NHS Sussex on improving the ‘modest priorities’ of its Shared Delivery Plan, urgent action on dentistry services and to lobby the Health Secretary about direct involvement and negotiation with striking union representatives.

Leader of the Labour group, Jeremy Gardner (Lab, St Mary’s Ward), said: “The Tories must get a grip on the biggest crisis in the history of the NHS.

“For 75 years, the people of Adur have depended on the care, skills, experience and dedication of local primary care professionals, community health staff, staff providing mental health care and NHS hospital services in Worthing, Southlands, Chichester and Brighton.”

Andy McGregor (Con, Widewater) said increases to waiting times are the results of industrial action taken by unions, and that their ‘friends’ in the Labour Party should be negotiating with them to call off their strike action.

He said: “These doctors aren’t striking to put food on the table for their starving families, they’re not striking for better conditions.

“My fear is that unions have been trigger happy in recommending strike action as a method of negotiation – coming up with a blunt instrument as a negotiating tactic, should not be the resort that we’ve reached now.

“This strike gives ammunition to the Labour Party to say that waiting times are going up even faster – of course they are because appointments are being cancelled because doctors are on strike.”

Robina Baine (Lab, Southwick) said waiting times in local hospitals for pain management treatments was 38 weeks, 56 weeks for gynaecology, 66 weeks for neurology and 56 paediatrics.

She compared that to a current commitment made by NHS England in 2004, to an 18 week maximum waiting time for non-urgent, consultant-led treatments.

She said: “Long waits for care and deteriorating services should not be tolerated – and under the last Labour Government, they weren’t – but 75 years on from the creation of the NHS, they are the norm.

“Each of those statistics is a person who with their family and relatives face uncertainty, discomfort, often for more than a year.”