FURTHER details have emerged about a heated meeting in which York's GPs said they had no confidence in NHS managers.

Doctors and practice managers from across the York and Selby area made a statement of no confidence in the senior management at Vale of York Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) earlier this year.

The meeting in Sand Hutton had been told the Vale of York CCG - which controls local NHS budgets from West Offices in Station Rise - was facing a financial deficit of about £6 million and a plan had been submitted to NHS England on how it planned to close the gap, minutes from the meeting have shown.

This was to avoid being put in special measures and a "turnaround team" being sent from NHS England.

After leaving the room for a discussion between the Council of Representatives, managers were anecdotally said to be "visibly upset" to have a statement of no-confidence read to them.

It said: "We wish to register our lack of confidence in the CCG Senior Management Team in both short and long term planning as evidenced by poor communication with the GP representatives.

"Although we value the work of the finance team...we also wish to register our lack of confidence in the ability of the CCG to deliver the financial recovery plan as presented to us today."

Before making the statement at the end of the meeting in September, the minutes - released under the Freedom of Information Act - reveal GPs frustrations over poor communication, funding issues and an lack of action over certain requests.

Vale of York CCG continues to face formal intervention from NHS England over financial difficulties which most recently mean they finish the year with a "risk adjusted deficit" of up to £4 million. Reasons include an overspend at York Hospital trust, an unexpected £700,000 bill for out-of-area placements of mental health patients and the cost of extra prescribing.

 

Communication between CCG and doctors withheld

DO you want to know more about what is happening with local NHS services?

So do we. As well as asking for the minutes of this meeting under the Freedom of Information Act, The Press has also asked for emails and letters exchanged between the council of representatives - which represents York's doctors - and the CCG management team immediately after this meeting.

This request was made after the CCG declined to directly answer questions about what happened as a result of the vote of no confidence.

In response to our questions, the CCG said only: "A strong effective relationship between the CoR and Governing Body facilitates feedback, reflection, scrutiny and constructive discussions and together we can reassure our patients that we take this responsibility seriously."

Almost six weeks after the original Freedom of Information request was made, the CCG said it was refusing to provide the correspondence. The authority claimed the request was "vexatious".

The Press has appealed against the decision.