Agenda item

10:20

The Committee’s Forward Plan (JHO7) is attached for consideration.

The Committee had before it for consideration a forward plan of items for future meetings.  It had been agreed to take the following speaker for this item.

Julie Mabberley requested that the Committee add In-patient beds in Wantage Hospital as a specific topic in the Forward Plan.  She outlined the background to the issue which first arose in 2016 when Oxford Health decided to close in-patient facilities temporarily on health and safety grounds.  They remained temporarily closed and at the Health and Wellbeing Board recently Diane Hedges reported that the community strategy timeline indicated that any decision on beds being reopened would not be known until the end of 2022.  At the last Committee meeting the Chairman pointed out that they had asked the Clinical Commissioning Group and Oxford Health to reopen the beds many times and that this had still not happened.  She asked the Committee to add this topic in the work plan urgently.

Dr Alan Cohen noted that on Agenda Page 20, item title “The First Thirty Days”, there were actually two separate papers – one by himself with Barbara Shaw and one by District Councillor Paul Barrow.  He asked that they be scheduled as separate items.

Councillor Charlie Hicks proposed a discussion for the next meeting on the role of the Committee, how the Committee, the health partners and accountable officers viewed the question of accountability and how issues could be escalated if the system was going in a different direction from that desired by the Committee.

The Chair noted that this was a time of massive transformation in health and social care services given the immediate and long-term effects of Covid-19.  She acknowledged all the work by officers in putting together the Forward Plan but noted that she had not had a chance to input, having only been elected at this meeting.  She proposed to have a meeting with officers and the Deputy Chair to understand the background to the plan and the resources available.

The Chair invited Members of the Committee to send their suggestions to the Committee Secretary.  She expected that there would be a lot of issues to discuss and that an extra meeting would be needed.

City Councillor Jabu Nala-Hartley suggested a discussion on the powers of the Committee.  The Chair responded that there was a need to look at training and some of the issues coming down the line such as the BOB-Integrated Care System (Bucks, Oxfordshire and Berkshire West) and legislation aimed at limiting power of Health Overview and Scrutiny Committees.

Anita Bradley, Monitoring Officer, suggested a need to prioritise the issues that would come forward as it was unlikely the Committee could deal with all of them.  She recommended using a scoring system.

District Councillor David Turner noted that there were 12 items on the plan that were marked ‘to be confirmed’.  He asked that target dates be set for every item to avoid drift.

The Chair noted that the Committee could request any health partner to come before it.  She also suggested that they should consider the voluntary sector in their plans as they were also doing great work.

Ansaf Azhar, Director for Public Health, offered to work with the Chair to revise the Forward Plan, noting the importance of bringing a population perspective and maximising the benefit for the population.

Action: Chair, Deputy Chair, Director for Public Health and other officers to meet to discuss and prioritise items for the Forward Plan.