Out of Hours Medical Care in Newark
In accordance with the Rule No. 3.4.3, Councillor S Crosby will move and Councillor M Spoors, will second a motion to the following effect:
“The difficulty in accessing out of hours medical care is an increasing concern for people in Newark and its surrounding area.
NHS Nottinghamshire discontinued its Accident and Emergency service in Newark Hospital in 2010. At that time, a specific commitment was made that NHS 24-hour urgent treatment would be available at Newark Hospital so that urgent cases of a lower severity could be treated locally, including at night, without the need for patients to travel outside the town for care1.
Between 2011 and 2021, the population of Newark grew by 9.8%. This is greater than the District or National increase, and this population growth is projected to continue2.
In October 2023, the NHS Nottingham and Nottinghamshire Integrated Care Board (ICB) review of the Urgent Treatment Centre in Newark resulted in a plan to close the Urgent Treatment Centre (UTC) at night. During this 2023 Engagement Exercise over 70% of people in Newark and the surrounding area were opposed to closing the UTC at night. Such a change is against the wishes of the population and contrary to commitments made to the people of Newark in 2010.
Newark and Sherwood District Council supports the view that provision of NHS urgent medical care and urgent treatment, 24 hours a day, free at the point of need, should be made available in Newark, based on the criteria of accessibility, patient safety, and clinical effectiveness.
This Council calls on the ICB to continue to work with the Health and Wellbeing Portfolio Holder at Newark and Sherwood District Council, alongside other stakeholders, to ensure that NHS capability and capacity for urgent treatment is maintained in Newark, with due regard to the needs of the people of Newark and its surrounding area”.
1. “Retaining A&E is not possible (see page 2). But the PCT has commissioned a 24/7replacement. As a result, up to 85% of patients will still be treated at Newark, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. For the first time, there will be a GP presence at Newark Hospital through the night. This means people will no longer have to travel outside the town to see a doctor.”
Newark’s Healthcare Review 2010.
2. Department of Levelling Up Housing and Communities, Local data Profile for Newark on Trent, March 2024.
Flood Mitigation
In accordance with the Rule No. 3.4.3, Councillor P Taylor will move and Councillor E Oldham will second a motion to the following effect:
“It is almost a year since Newark and Sherwood residents suffered a services of devastating flooding events including Storm Babet and Storm Henk. We are rapidly approaching the next flood season.
As a Council we are committed to not going back to business as usual until we resolve the flooding issues, as flooding is devastating so many of Newark and Sherwood resident’s lives.
We established the Newark and Sherwood Multi Agency Flood partnership to develop the following asks to address flooding across Newark and Sherwood.
This Council agrees to lobby locally, including our two MPs, regionally the East Midlands Mayor Claire Ward and nationally government Ministers to implement the following 11 urgent requests. As part of any solutions as previously agreed we will seek to promote increased use of natural solutions to flooding when appropriate as often this is the most economic solution.
1. A flood mitigation scheme needs to be developed for the Trent at a national level. This would require support and development from those with the statutory responsibilities. We need a system of assessing flood defences which moves away from a simple financial judgement in terms of how many people are taken out of flood risk compared to the investment required.
2. Funding or at least a format to achieve whole society preparedness for emergencies as was announced post covid. This should be similar to the Scotland prepared programme.
3. A suite of communications tools should be developed for at risk communities so the burden of giving bad news to homeowners regarding climate change and the local impacts they face doesn’t sit on just the shoulders of Councils.
4. Review and tightening of national planning and connection regulations, to require both approval and inspection of completed flood and drainage schemes by the relevant flood risk authority. This would be aimed at reducing unauthorised connections into foul sewer systems and ensuing mitigation measures are correctly installed. The inability to deal with inappropriate connections to foul sewer systems needs revisiting at a national level given an ongoing inability to redress such connections.
5. Consider how developments can robustly mitigate flood risk in locations which have suffered flooding even if flood risk maps have not been updated. It should then be a mandatory requirement that such solutions are implemented and checked by the relevant flood risk authority. Currently, there is a lag between validating where flooding has taken place and updating flood risk maps, meaning planners are making decisions on maps which may change. Flood guidance should require schemes to mitigate that risk where flooding is known to have occurred.
6. Ensure water authorities are required and resourced to deliver effective flood prevention maintenance on rivers and water courses. Whilst this would need to be done sympathetically to protect wildlife and biodiversity, prevention is far better and cheaper than cure.
7. Funding to assist water safety training for essential responders. Our officers have consistently been prepared to put themselves in harm’s way, to support vulnerable residents and communities, yet we have no statutory requirement to do so. If we’re going to continue to go above and beyond, we should be given funding to appropriately train those staff and provide them with the right equipment.
8. In a similar vein, Government should recognise the revenue resources authorities such as ours need to invest in response, recovery and mitigation activities. Newark and Sherwood encompass a third of the land mass of Nottinghamshire and has historically suffered more flooding than any other part of the County. Yet, those resource requirements don’t feature in our settlements currently. When emergency responses are undertaken, the Government should make payments far more rapidly – costs the Council incurred during Storm Babet and Storm Henk (£105k) have still not been recovered despite numerous conversations with officials. There has been no official communication, nor proactive engagement, moreover individual authorities have been left to “forge their own path” for claiming reimbursement, with no deadline dates for submitting information and no deadline dates for confirmation of approval or rejection. There does not appear to be, or it does not appear to be working correctly, any set framework to assist authorities in reimbursement of these additional revenue costs, despite acknowledgement of issue through the various other parts of the Flood Recovery Framework.
9. The Government needs to raise its game in supporting communities in their recovery. Over Storms Babet and Henk, we experienced consistent delays in Government guidance surrounding the flood recovery framework, along with some ill-thought-out guidance and criteria that served to add unnecessary anxiety to those hit by flooding at a time when they needed rapid financial support.
10. Over the last four financial years, the Internal Drainage Board (IDB) levy for Newark and Sherwood has increased by 59% from £595,400 in 2020/21 to £949,800 in 2024/25, far outstripping the increases in Council Tax which is allowed to be charged (a maximum of 10.3% over the same period). As annual increases in the levy have outweighed the additional yield in Council Tax generatable, budgets available for front line services have had to be diverted to contribute towards the cost of the imposed levy. The impact on service delivery is compounded with inflationary costs (such as pay awards and cost inflation) that are not able to be raised through Council Tax as the whole of the Council Tax increase is being consumed by the increase in the levy. The Leader of this Council has been working with the LGA Special Interest Group in making representations to government for a sustainable funding solution. By either compensating in whole, or centrally funding IDB expenditure, government could reduce the burden on local authority budgets that are disproportionately affected by IDB levies.
11. Consider how, in circumstances where developments have already been consented and thus are being lawfully implemented based on a previous version of the flood risk of an area (so the flood risk maps relevant at the time of the consent) how flood risk agencies and/or preferably developers can retrospectively address flood risk if the flood profile or maps upon which the consent was based are now demonstrably out of date to such a degree that flood risk has increased”.