A LEADING Thurrock councillor has spoken of her concern about the way health care provision in the borough is being reshaped - almost without notice by local residents and hidden in full sight of a consultation process that appears to little more than a cosmetic front.

Plans were announced last year by a government-empowered quango called the Mid and South Essex Sustainability and Transformation Partnership (STP).

Its aim was to merge the region's individual clinical commissioning groups into one large, county wide body.

Effectively it could take provision and buying of local health care in Thurrock out of local hands.

The proposal met with significant opposition, not just in Thurrock, but its progression to reality appears almost unabated.

A consultation seeking the views of Thurrock residents was set in place and a number of public meetings held. Opinions were also invited online.

The consultation is still to be made public - but regardless of what it says, things have moved on apace.

With very little public fanfare, the STP has been transformed into a new organisation called the Mid and South Essex Health and Care Partnership.

It has now taken the lead role in driving the merger forward and has even appointed an interim senior accountable officer, Anthony McKeever - and other staff including a Thurrock deputy accountable officer.

They appear to be dictating policy to Thurrock, though its own accountable officer Many Ansell appears still to be in post. She was reported to be stepping down this month and retiring, but it is believed she will be staying on into May.

The role of the new partnership first came to light last week when it was announced as the body organising Covid-19 tests for key workers - but failed to arrange a testing site in Thurrock where there are many thousands of them.

The fear is this is 'the thin edge of the wedge' as Thurrock gets second class treatment.

The chair of Thurrock Council's Health and Wellbeing Scrutiny Committee says she is very concerned about what is happening - and fears Thurrock may lose services and its residents miss out on the best health care available by the merger.

Cllr Victoria Holloway says: "Thurrock Council, my committee and the former cabinet member for health (Cllr James Halden) have written a number of letters and officers have made a number of representations in person about how unhappy we are about this merger.

"We are fighting to have a Thurrock voice on any new management structure as we know once you enlarge and broaden a demographic foot print you widen the chances of big decisions being made for that larger demographic instead of the specific needs of Thurrock."

The changes come just weeks after the appointment of a new chair, Dr Anil Kallil, and a new local governor, Alan Hudson, for Thurrock CCG. They told Thurrock Nub News of their hopes. Mr Hudson said: "It is so important that the voice of Thurrock residents is represented at a time when improved health and social services are being designed and delivered."

Thurrock Nub News asked Thurrock clinical Commissioning Group for specific clarification about the role of Mandy Ansell but we have not had an answer.

"We are committed to returning to this work and continuing our conversations with the public"

The Group did make the following statement: "There are still five CCGs each with a legally constituted Governing Body, who oversee governance and decision making and we have had to reprioritise our work to allow our focus to be completely dealing with the challenges the COVID-19 outbreak has brought.

"In line with guidance by NHS England and Improvement, our plans to deliver on the NHS Long Term plan commitments, including the application to merge into a single CCG have temporarily paused, as has the programme of face to face engagement we had begun, to support this.

"Once able, we are committed to returning to this work and continuing our conversations with the public. In the meantime residents are able to still complete our survey for feedback which remains open on each of the CCGs own websites.

"In September 2019 all five mid and south Essex CCGs received two separate papers at their public Board meetings. You can access these here.

"The first paper (reference agenda item 4) recommended that the five CCGs would move to a single Joint Accountable Officer and a single Joint Executive Team – this did not require formal public consultation or engagement other than with governing bodies.

"Antony McKeever was appointed as the Interim Joint Accountable Officer in March and Thurrock is supported by Mark Tebbs as Deputy Accountable Officer.

"Our partnership has evolved"

"The second paper (reference agenda item 5) was to commence work on exploring a merger application by September 2020.

"Again, whilst this did not require formal public consultation a programme of engagement with both the public and stakeholders was launched to understand any issues such a move would have and to seek to mitigate those in the final decision making – the work towards this as outlined above has been paused and no decision has yet been taken.

"Our Partnership, which was previously described as a Sustainability and Transformation Partnership, includes local GP practices, hospitals, community care, social services, mental health teams and local government, and has evolved so it now spans more fully to all those with the responsibility for the provision of health and care in mid and south Essex.

"The new name reflects the Partnership's desire to become a fully integrated care system by April 2021, as described in the national NHS Long Term Plan. You can get further details of the Partnership and the role of Thurrock statutory bodies here.

And this morning (28 April) we received this statement:

Mark Tebbs, Deputy Accountable Officer, Thurrock CCG said:

"NHS Thurrock CCG remains a single statutory clinical commissioning group and we continue to work with our partners across mid and south Essex as described in our previous statement. The post of Accountable Officer is a statutory post filled by our new Interim Joint Accountable Officer, Anthony McKeever. Mark Tebbs has been appointed as the Deputy Accountable Officer for NHS Thurrock CCG."