The ‘albatross medallion’ may have to hang from a different neck from 2020

With the Governments announcement that Unitary Councils can raise additional income to cover care costs by 2% which in our laymen’s terms means that Council Tax will rise in single tier areas such as Northumberland by 4% it shows that the Government haven’t yet grasped the problems faced by the County Unitary Councils who have embraced integrated care, that’s care which is designed to keep as many ill people as possible treated safely in their own homes thereby helping to reduce unplanned readmissions to hospital. Northumberland County Council and Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust are leaders in that field.

The Government tell us that Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust manage and provide hospital and community services in North Tyneside and In Northumberland deliver hospitals, community services and adult care services. Northumberland County Council are the driving force behind the County Clinical Commissioning Group which helps balance the full financial package with some considerable funds travelling to the NHS from Council Tax to cover this service.

This whole arrangement has been an unmitigated success in most years particularly when the full winter pressures payment has been eventually paid up by Government, it allows an area struggling with high levels of industrial disease from its mining and heavy industrial past to cope with ever more elderly and keep readmissions to a minimum, but things are changing.

The last Labour Council in County Hall invested heavily in health by borrowing cheaply and buying out PFI’s and designing loan schemes to help its NHS partner to maintain the 9000 jobs that are one of the two mainstays of Northumberland’s Gross Domestic Product the Council being the other.

Using Council borrowed cash the NHS Trust was able to expand its Cramlington site an almost doubling in size that is lying quiet and still for that want of cash to pay the staff.

The idea of this expansion was timed when the Council and the Trust could rely on disability living allowance payments to the disabled who unlike the vision described in the Tory media do not live a lavish lifestyle and pay for much of their own care using their benefits as care funds, much of which is recycled back into the NHS. Ian Duncan Smith’s change to Personal Independence Payments and the requirement to appeal  before its paid, leaving many without funds for months to pay for care, destroyed what was a moderately sound ‘money tree’ to support the NHS in the County.

The new changes to attack the poor and make them poorer by attacking carers and pressurising families to find cash to support their disabled relatives has caused another shortfall with the golden apples from the money tree rotting off.

The Council in its anguish to ensure success for its NHS Partner has agreed a £16M cut in revenue services to the public over three years, which effectively will lead to major cuts in staffing levels and massive reductions in service delivery outside of adult care and expose the weaknesses in integration to the wider public.

£16M plus 2% a year is not enough to save the NHS having to reverse its cash flow and begin to pay for what most NHS Trusts see as the Councils responsibility.

Without a massive house building program County wide particularly in the popular Countryside areas in order to ensure high rateable values harvest a prime return bringing in more residents to aid the ailing County Council, both the Council and its NHS partner will suffer badly. It’s a pity that Northumberland’s Tory ‘act before you think Councillors’ stopped the Dissington Garden Village scheme in its tracks in 2017, 2500 valuable and popular homes in what would have been a high rateable value area may have halted the dwindling of essential NHS & Care Services in Northumberland