Issue - meetings

Questions from County Councillors

 

 

Meeting: 18/03/2014 - Cabinet (Item 22)

22 Questions from County Councillors pdf icon PDF 112 KB

Any county councillor may, by giving notice to the Proper Officer by 9 am two working days before the meeting, ask a question on any matter in respect of the Cabinet’s delegated powers.

 

The number of questions which may be asked by any councillor at any one meeting is limited to two (or one question with notice and a supplementary question at the meeting) and the time for questions will be limited to 30 minutes in total. As with questions at Council, any questions which remain unanswered at the end of this item will receive a written response.

 

Questions submitted prior to the agenda being despatched are shown below and will be the subject of a response from the appropriate Cabinet Member or such other councillor or officer as is determined by the Cabinet Member, and shall not be the subject of further debate at this meeting. Questions received after the despatch of the agenda, but before the deadline, will be shown on the Schedule of Addenda circulated at the meeting, together with any written response which is available at that time.

Decision:

See attached annex

Minutes:

Councillor Hards had given notice of the following question to Councillor Hibbert Biles:

 

“Following the reply to the question which I addressed to Councillor Hibbert-Biles at Cabinet on 25 February, I’ve been making enquiries about the “improved integrated sexual health service” to which the Cabinet Member referred.

 

Although the services will be provided in what might loosely be described as “premises in geographical locations where previous services were in place”, I understand that only the Banbury contraception & sexual health (C&SH) clinic will be in the same location as before and that many of the new locations are less well provisioned.

 

Taking Didcot as an example:

The new integrated sexual Health service provided at the Oak Tree Health Centre will:

  1. not have a dedicated confidential reception area – the proposal is for a table in the waiting area. Of course this may change in the future if pushed but has implications for both staff safety and patient confidentiality.
  2. Have a new computer system which will be unfamiliar to the genito-urinary medicine (GUM) and C&SH staff, which is not yet running, and for which no training has yet been given to staff in C&SH
  3. Have considerably less storage facilities for pills, antibiotics, dressings etc than is currently available in Didcot Health Centre despite the inclusion of GUM services in the clinic.
  4. Have a limited number of clinical rooms which will not be sufficient to provide the increased service and as well as accommodating the existing number of C&SH focused staff. This does not look like an enhanced service – it is an additional service for GUM but requires a contraction of the C&SH service.

 

What steps did the Cabinet Member for Public Health take to ensure that the tender specification was adequate, and that the contract which was signed fully met that specification?”

 

Councillor Hibbert Biles replied:

“The sexual health service will be delivered from a combination of community and secondary care locations in similar geographic locations to existing clinics. Unfortunately it is reported to us by the new providers that while they wanted to lease existing sites, they were not able to do so for all sites.  However, all the new clinics which will house the new service will be based in the same towns as current services and meet the agreed specifications to give a wide coverage across the county.

 

Access to services is a priority of the commissioners and across the service as a whole there will be an increase in hours of service compared to current hours. The commissioners of this service believe that the new integrated service being implemented will provide improved sexual health services across Oxfordshire and will meet the changing needs of the residents of Oxfordshire.

 

 Taking Didcot as an example:

The new integrated sexual Health service provided at the Oak Tree Health Centre will:

  1. Not have a dedicated confidential reception area – the proposal is for a table in the waiting area. Of course this may change in  ...  view the full minutes text for item 22