South Warwickshire Beds Review: What Shipston residents made of NHS consultation event

South Warwickshire University NHS Foundation Trust’s (SWFT) preferred option is to keep 35 rehabilitation beds at sites in Stratford and Warwick, as has been the case since the building in Shipston was closed.

There is a second option available, to transfer 12 of those to Shipston when the new facility opens later this year.

It is argued that people in Shipston need facilities nearby due to an aging population and because promises were made over the retention of services when funds were raised to help redevelop the site.

Information provided by the NHS said Shipston had 16 community beds that were temporarily moved to Warwick when the site closed and that the data shows that most of the beds are actually required by people from other areas.

Increased travel time for visitors and staff, increased costs in maintaining beds across three sites rather than two acute settings where other services are more readily available and the added availability of home-based recovery, reducing the overall need for such beds, are among the justifications for the NHS view.

The choice is the subject of a public consultation that runs until Friday, February 14, and the NHS ran an in-person drop-in event in Shipston last week with all feedback to be collated and considered ahead of the final decision being made in March.

Shipston residents who attended gave a mixed response.

Done deal?

Joe Johnson, 63, of Shipston, believes the feedback will not change anything.

“I think the decision was made when they shut the hospital and sadly, I think it is going to be lost anyway,” he said.

“Whatever these good people (objectors) do, they have given their best, but I think it is a done deal. They’ve made it look like we don’t need the beds.”

He cited an increasing population as justification for beds at the Ellen Badger.

“We have a lot of people in Shipston now and it would benefit the area," he said.

‘Sterile’ consultation

Jes Bains, 71, was unimpressed by the delivery of the event, which entailed visitors walking around information boards with NHS staff on hand to answer questions.

“It was a shambles,” he said.

“I came expecting to see people in front of us and to listen to what the plan was, how they are getting on, a question and answer session and actually pick up more information.

"They would have got an idea of some of the anger there is in Shipston over the decisions being made if they had done that.

“It was just so sterile, just reading things on a board and it just made you feel more and more angry.

“It is all online anyway, I had read it, but even the survey, you can’t really express the anger that Shipston folk are feeling about losing the beds we were promised.”

Arguing that “you can’t call it a hospital if you don’t have beds”, Mr Bains said Shipston warrants more than just a rehabilitation wing.

“We are right down south, and it is not just Shipston, it is all the surrounding villages,” he added.

“We have an aging population and to ask us to travel to Warwick, it will take ages and it doesn’t seem fair.

“Stratford, Warwick, Coventry, they all have beds. They are depriving us of the facilities that other folks have up there.

“If we have a hospital, I think we should have the full works here. I know it is expensive but why should Shipston miss out?

“It seems so unfair on the League of Friends, they took the money and promised everything would be back to normal afterwards. It is not going to be like that.”

Wrecking ball

Sarah Stoten felt what was laid out was clear and thought out but said the focus solely on rehabilitation beds had missed the point.

“I don’t feel it bears any relation to the consultation we had been promised and should have, which is a consultation for change of use,” she said.

“The Ellen Badger had a wrecking ball put through it. It had been a hospital with beds and I find it hard to imagine a hospital without beds, whatever people may say.

“It was not solely a rehabilitation hospital, it also stopped people needing to go into an acute hospital. People might be off their feet for a few days, they would go into the Ellen Badger and after some good care they would be able to go home again.

“They offered all those services that there are long waits for now, unless you go to accident and emergency.

“It was central to this town and set up in Victorian England by Mr Badger to honour his wife. There is nothing of it left and it is a disgrace.”

NHS response

Coventry and Warwickshire Integrated Care Board (ICB), the body that commissions NHS services and will make the final decision, said that while it had a preferred option, the feedback would be considered before choosing between the two available.

It added that the volume of need for rehabilitation beds in Shipston and the surrounding areas had been stable for some years with only 16 per cent of them used by locals prior to its closure, data that is presented in the publicly-available NHS business case. It committed to working with councillors and residents to address specfic localised needs.

On the structure of the consultation, the method was chosen to enable everyone to participate and speak to various members of the NHS team, including clinicians, noting that not everyone would have been comfortable or confident in speaking up in front of a crowd. It was also done to replicate what people could read online for those without digital skills or access.

It added that review of urgent care services across Coventry and Warwickshire is underway, including out of hours services, urgent treatment centres and other non-emergency services with support for rural areas such as Shipston to be considered.

What will be delivered was described as “a new modern healthcare facility providing enhanced clinical spaces for hospital and community services, bringing more specialities and clinics closer to the local communities and around Shipston”.