Agenda item - Public Involvement

To consider the following items raised by members of the public:

(a)       Petitions: To receive any petitions presented by members of the public to the full Council or to the meeting itself;

(b)       Written Questions: To receive any questions submitted by the due date of 12noon on the 4^th July 2026.

(c)        Deputations: To receive any deputations submitted by the due date of 12 noon on the 4^th July 2026.

4(a)    public question from Jo

4.1      Cllr Evans read out the public question at Jo’s request: How does Southdown redesign of services demonstrate empowering mental health service user voices when their feedback and complaint portal is designed too small to hold complaints and AI is used to change the meaning of complaints into inaccurate versions of those complaints?

4.2      The Chair told members that he had forwarded the question to Southdown who manage the services in question and had received the following response:

Southdown’s complaints process uses a Microsoft Customer Voice form, which includes a 4,000-character field for describing a complaint. This is normally sufficient for people to explain their concerns. Where additional information is required, it can be submitted by email and is retained in full as part of the complaint record. In some cases, people choose to submit their complaint by email rather than using the form. Where this happens, the service manager enters the complaint into the Microsoft Customer Voice form on the complainant’s behalf. If the original email exceeds the 4,000-character limit of the relevant form field, the full email is retained within the complaint record and considered as part of the investigation.

In all cases, complaints are explored using all the information we receive. Information recorded within the complaints system is used to support acknowledgement and response correspondence. Where the length of a complaint exceeds the capacity of a relevant field within the system, a summary is used instead, while the full complaint remains available to inform the investigation. This approach is explained to the complainant and is not intended to alter the meaning of the complaint, only to summarise its content. Supporting software may be used to produce this summary and, if the complainant feels it is inaccurate, the summary can be updated.

4(b)    public question from Mr Gary Vallier

4.3      Mr Vallier asked: The independent NHS investigation into WellBN has now identified actual and potential harm arising from prescribing practices affecting children and young people in Brighton. For many months HOSC declined to pursue questions about local safeguarding arrangements on the basis that an investigation was underway.

Now that the report has been published, what specific scrutiny activity will HOSC undertake to examine the wider system issues identified, including relationships between schools, youth services, primary care and specialist gender services?

4.4      The Chair responded:

Thank you for your question. I note the publication of the NHS England review. The review has identified serious issues regarding the clinical approach to care by some GPs at the WellBN practice and I welcome the actions taken by NHS England and NHS Surrey & Sussex as set out in the report.

Following today’s meeting, I will discuss with committee members whether this is an issue they wish to scrutinise in depth. I will consider whether it is appropriate to scrutinise NHS Surrey & Sussex Integrated Care Board’s role in commissioning and overseeing local primary care services. This may include inviting the ICB to attend a future meeting.