Who are we?

NHS Care for All is made up of the North Staffs Pensioners’ Convention, Save Leek Hospital and Save Bradwell Hospital campaigns, local campaigning group Healthwatch, the local branch of the Green Party, representatives of trade unions, local councillors of all political persuasions and local MPs.

We are mounting a legal challenge to the NHS Stoke-on-Trent and North Staffordshire Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) plans and we need your donations to enable us to do this.

What is the situation?

The proposals put forward by the CCGs would formalise the ‘temporary’ closure of NHS community hospital beds across our area, which began over four years ago.  This policy is putting vulnerable people of all ages at risk and damaging the NHS as a whole.  We just need to look at the queues at the A&E departments to see the knock on effect of this policy.

Our local Community Hospital teams, several of which have won awards, offered an excellent programme of rehabilitation and reablement to their patients, to allow them to return home safely. 

The CCGs plans will see the permanent reduction in the number of such beds from 264 to 132.  Of these 132 beds, 55 would be commissioned from the private care home sector, where standards are often inferior to NHS Community Hospital care.

The CCGs say that they are providing better services in people’s own homes to replace NHS community hospital care.  However, they have failed to provide convincing evidence that they have put quality care services in place in the community.  They have ignored all the representations put to them by local communities throughout this process and refused to compromise in any way.

What are we doing and how can you help?

We have reluctantly decided, with the support of all those within NHS Care for All group, that we need to mount a legal challenge.  In particular, we are challenging the assumption underlying the consultation that the CCGs will only require 132 beds.

Our solicitors have written a formal letter to the CCGs notifying them of our intention to issue judicial review proceedings against them.  For this stage of the process to begin, we need to raise £4,300 to cover the legal costs.

Please help us to defend our NHS community hospital care in North Staffordshire.  Pledge whatever you can afford, and also share this page with all your contacts on social media.