Agenda item - Chair's Communications

21.1    The Chair gave the following communications:

Firstly, for a number of years, there has been a co-opted place on HOSC for a representative of the city Youth Council. This used to work really well, but changes to the Youth Council have meant that they weren’t able to support a young person to attend in recent years. I’m happy to say that we now have an arrangement where they can attend once more and I’m really pleased to welcome the Youth Council to the meeting today.

Secondly, you will hopefully have had the chance to read the Healthwatch Brighton & Hove papers on patient transport and on dentistry that were circulated by email to members last week. These aren’t a formal part of today’s committee papers, but I wanted you to see them in advance of the meeting as Healthwatch hears from normal people across the city and provides such a valuable insight on the issues that most concern our residents. Geoffrey Bowden, the Healthwatch Chair, is with us today and I’m sure he will be happy to answer any questions that members may have on these reports.

Finally, you will have noted that two of the items at today’s meetings are presentations rather than reports and that slides have only been circulated today.

In terms of the University Hospitals Trust item, there was a CQC inspection of the Trust in August and we were hoping that the inspection report would be published ahead of the meeting and that Trust representatives could speak to this. The Trust has contacted the CQC on numerous occasions to ask them to confirm the publication date, but has had no definitive response. We had to wait until today just in case.

In terms of children’s cancer, NHS England were similarly waiting for a report to be published – in this instance the independent report on their recent public consultation. This was only released this afternoon.

So in both instances, I’m sorry that we weren’t able to share papers in advance, but this was because we had to wait for really important information.