Keep The Horton General group vow to fight on for maternity services
26/11/2020
“If the Council aren’t prepared to do it and our elected representatives aren’t prepared to do it, it may be left once again to the Keep The Horton General Group, and the public would have to pay for it”
The Chairman of the Keep The Horton General Group has vowed that the fight to return full obstetrics to the Horton isn’t over. Keith Strangwood has told Banbury FM that if the council and our elected representatives aren’t willing to fight the decision it may be left to the Keep The Horton General Group once again.
Earlier we reported that this Friday’s meeting of the Horton Joint Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee (Horton HOSC) could see a decision being made to give up on the battle to return obstetric-led maternity services to the Horton General Hospital. The committee’s Chairman, County Councillor Arash Fatemian, has described the Department of Health’s rejection of a request for the Clinical Commissioning Group’s decision to be reviewed by the Independent Reconfiguration Panel as “the end of the road”.
Mr Strangwood said: “The refusal has come from the Department of Health offices and the refusal says that it doesn’t differentiate from the 2017 referral therefore it won’t be passed to an IRP. Therefore it hasn’t been looked at by an Independent Reconfiguration Panel.”
Horton HOSC Chairman Cllr Fatemian has suggested the chances of winning in an appeal against the decision are too small. He said: “having sought legal opinion from the County Council’s Head of Legal it has been advised that our chances of success are, at best, 30% so I do not think that makes this a viable option.”
Mr Strangwood disagrees. He said: “The words used are ‘cost to benefit ratio’. Considering we have councils that spend up to £100m on a shopping centre that people didn’t actually ask for, a possible cost of £80,000-£160,000 to save a new life or protect a mother, then surely that’s money well spent.
“If our country thought that way – cost to benefit ratio – we’d never have won two world wars would we.”
Mr Stangwood feels this could just leave the Horton in limbo. He said: “The removal has always been called temporary. Once again now they’re calling it permanent and this has come from the voices of the scrutiny committee.
“It must and will remain temporary.
“The ex-Chief Executive of the Clinical Commissioning Group, Lou Patten told me in a meeting with my members that it will be looked at probably every two years or so as to whether obstetrics could come back.
“There’s a Horton Vision in progress at the moment and that vision for the future of the Horton site will have to go before the scrutiny Committee. They, at that point, can insist that obstetrics are part of that Horton vision.
“Keep The Horton won’t give up. We’ve already made contact with our legal representatives and if we can find the money I can’t see why [we can’t challenge the decision]. If the Council aren’t prepared to do it and our elected representatives aren’t prepared to do it, then it may be left once again to the Keep The Horton General Group, and the public would have to pay for it.”
Published: by the Banbury FM News Team
