Agenda item

Update on Heathlands

Executive Member for Adult Services, Health and Housing to provide an update on Heathlands.

Minutes:

Councillor Dale Birch, Executive Member for Adult Services, Health and Housing attended the Panel and provided an update on the development of Heathlands.  It was explained that:

·         Heathlands was going to be a care home with 66 beds for elderly and mentally infirm (EMI) patients who needed nursing care.

·         One of the drivers behind the project was to have this kind of facility locally available as Bracknell Forest did not have one currently.

·         Members were aware that the Council was working with Frimley Health and the East Berkshire CCG in order to design and fund Heathlands.

·         The planning layout had come up against planning rules and regulations and had had to be redesigned. 

·         On the back of the redesign, the business case had been re-evaluated.  The re-evaluation of the business case with all partners had concluded today (4 February 2019).

·         The business case was sound.  Funding sources would be identified and a paper would be brought to the Executive on 12 March 2019 to outline the business case and from that all the decisions and governance arrangements in the party organisations could be set up to approve the project.

·         It was hoped that Heathlands would become a reality later in 2019 when work started.

·         It was hoped that in 2020 the first residents would be welcomed into Heathlands.

·         It was hoped that a patient’s stay at Heathlands would only be as a staging post on their way to homebased support or on into other localities. 

·         It would enable patients to take advantage of the facility in the Borough so that out of Borough placements would be reduced providing cost and quality control to Bracknell Forest Council.

·         It was hoped Heathlands would be a model for future shared resourcing working with the health services in terms of pooling resources and people.

 

In response to questions from Members, Councillor Dale Birch, Executive Member for Adult Services, Health and Housing explained that:

·         During the planning process, at the pre-application stage, the aspect of the building was not liked and that hurdle still had to be overcome.

·         Heathlands was a 66 bed care home and it was planned for individual occupancy.  There were no partner facilities.

·         Heathlands was for elderly and mentally infirm (EMI) patients, not residential for dementia care.

·         The item IO81949 in the Executive Work Programme entitled Proposal for an Integrated and Delegated Continuing Health Care Service Across East Berkshire was not related to Heathlands.

·         Community Health Care was funded by the Council.  The Council had a pilot to look at the integration of continuing health care and community healthcare, item IO81949 in the Executive Work Plan referred to that.  Currently Heathlands was not part of the pilot project.  In future there would be patients in Heathlands that would come under integrated continuing health care, but this was a pilot project currently.  Ultimately, Heathlands should be included.

·         The business case for Heathlands was a separate business case.  Eventually continuing health care and Heathlands would get pulled together. Heathlands stood on its own merit currently.

·         The early design work for Heathlands had been done by Atkins.

 

The Chairman thanked Councillor Dale Birch, Executive Member for Adult Services, Health for updating the Panel and asked that the Panel be provided with continuing updates on Heathlands as the project progressed. 

 

 

Contact Information

Democratic services

Email: committee@bracknell-forest.gov.uk