Future Fit: Shropshire Council leader attacks 'ill thought through' health plans

Malcolm Pate said the changes will place a huge burden on social services.

And he accused NHS bosses of not fully understanding the impact of their ideas on cash-strapped councils.

Neither Shropshire Council nor Telford & Wrekin Council agreed to ratify the "sustainability and transformation plan" – or STP – for the NHS in the county.

The plan incorporates the Future Fit proposals to have a single A&E department at Royal Shrewsbury Hospital with Princess Royal Hospital downgrading to an urgent care centre.

The STP also calls for tens of thousands of appointments to be moved from the hospitals and into the community, as well as 35,000 outpatient appointments to be done via a video link.

Councillor Pate, along with Shropshire Council's chief executive Clive Wright, attacked the plan, saying it relies upon the idea there will be fewer people coming through the county's hospitals. But they said Shropshire Council has not been properly consulted on the major role it will have to take – and there is not enough money set aside to make it happen.

Councillor Pate said: "They haven't consulted us and don't fully understand our problems regarding delivering the care when hospitals are finished with people.

"Once somebody goes into hospital, at the other end they come out into social care."

He said there had been no input from council staff on the need to control the demands on social care, adding: "The emphasis is not right and certainly it has ignored our part of the process. I think it has arrived at a figure it needs to make the plans stack up and then altered the facts, I believe, to match that calculation. Because anybody who knows the situation that we're in at Shropshire Council regarding funding elderly care, it's one of our worst problems.

"As far as it is concerned it can use our money as a sort of buffer to stack its finances up. There doesn't seem much point in going out to consultation on the plan if it's not financially viable. It could be £110 million short on finance – we just don't know."

Councillor Pate has demanded a council representative on the STP board, calling it "absolutely ludicrous" that the move has not happened already.

Simon Wright, chief executive of Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust, is leading the STP process. He said it was a "live document" that would continue to evolve, and both Shropshire and Telford &Wrekin councils would be heavily involved in that.

Today Richard Caddy, speaking for Shropshire Clinical Commissioning Group said: "It is a work in progress. All partners will have an input into it."