Sheffield's "Place Plan" - part of the South Yorkshire and Bassetlaw STP

The NHS was instructed early this year to prepare Sustainability and Transformation Plans for 44 NHS Footprint areas. Ours is South Yorkshire and Bassetlaw and it is founded on so-called Place Plans for each of the CCG areas involved. The foundation for Sheffield's Place Plan is the Out of Hospital Strategy previously adopted by the CCG.

The STPs are unequivocally about getting the NHS to make local decisions about how to manage within the very tight and effectively reducing Government budget for the NHS. Nervous about this, NHS England placed a ban on public involvement during the preparation of the plans. In many areas (including West Yorkshire) they involve hospital closures. Some London Councils have refused to sign up to STPs where they involve the closure of popular facilities and the organisation Health Campaigns Together is calling on all Councils to refuse to sign up to STPs where they involve significant closures.

Some details of the Sheffield Plan will be made available on 29th Sept but local statements suggest that the process is currently more fluid than the early proclamations from NHS England anticipated. Although the plans are scheduled for implementation from April 2017 there will have to be formal public consultation from October. In Sheffield this will include sub-regional consultation on new proposals for hyper-acute stroke and paediatric surgery services - separate from but linked to the STP - and any changes deemed 'significant' by Sheffield CCG on Urgent and Emergency Care. the changes to stroke and paediatric services will involve some services ceasing in some centres (e.g. Barnsley and Rotherham) in order to reinforce/improve the regional services from the centres regarded as stronger (including Sheffield. This will have implications for income, viability and capacity in all local hospitals and the consultation will need to be vigorously addressed.

The Sheffield Plan is due to be approved by the Clinical Commissioning Group on 1st December and will be the subject of a citywide workshop on 8th December, hosted by Sheffield Health and Wellbeing Board and Sheffield Healthwatch.