As Parliament comes to the end of its busy current session I have enjoyed spending more time in Somerset this week. I plan over the summer to hold a series of surgeries throughout the area, inviting people to make sure my team has a full inventory of their issues so that we can work on them. This will be during the "back to school" period rather than the beginning of the summer holiday season though, since my wife and I are expecting a new addition to our family any day now and this means the next few weeks will take me out of action for visits.
At the Somerset Clinical Commissioning Group's governors' board meeting that I attended this week it was formally decided to integrate health and social care in Somerset, which is exciting as this is what I have been encouraging so as to be more able to meet the needs of our aging population at times of financial constraint. What it means is that the system will move to 'outcomes based commissioning'. The idea behind this is that the focus should be on patient and client needs and outcomes, and that a long term rather than year to year funding arrangement should be put in place. This is an expansion of the national vanguard project which began in Yeovil, to something that will operate Somerset wide with the full backing of the County Council and the Clinical Commissioning Group.
The board explained their rationale for closing 40 beds in community hospitals because they are underused and there are better uses for the money, and the way in which they plan to make best use of each hospital to contribute to the local health care system. For example, Chard's hospital will become a "step up" hospital in which a large part of their work will be to accommodate people with increasing need of a hospital environment but which don't need acute care in Musgrove Park or Yeovil, Crewkerne will become focused mainly on "step down", in which people leaving acute care can still be treated in a hospital environment but be closer to their families, and South Petherton will build on its particular abilities in rehabilitation and expand its wellbeing activities. There will still be flexibility within this "step up, step down" model so that particular patient pathways can be accommodated appropriately.
I also attended the County Council meeting in Taunton and assured colleagues on the government's intention on road spending. The money is there in the budget for A358 and A303 dualling works to start, and I am liaising with the Minister and Highways England on the programming at the moment.
I was further able to assure colleagues that Ministerial attention to broadband in Somerset is undimmed, and the national government match funding for Phase 2 of the Connecting Devon & Somerset project to connect homes that would not otherwise be connected under the commercial programme is still there. I remain focused on the subject of so many business and resident concerns in Yeovil in particular: trying to get BT to complete its commercial roll out in Yeovil. It is quite wrong that business parks and new developments should be left without a proper broadband connection.
I also took the opportunity to attend the annual Achievement Awards ceremony for our children in care, at which the beaming smiles on the children's faces confirmed to me how incredibly valuable the work is that our foster carers do in Somerset.
It was also brilliant to visit Chard for its festival on the weekend, and to see progress at the wonderful Museum and the Grade 1 listed Court House. Chard should not hide its light under a bushel, these are really fascinating places to visit!