Council threatens legal action over failure to find fertility services provider

Hartlepool Borough Council is set to renew legal hostilities with its local NHS trust and a clinical commissioning group over the end of fertility services.

The council took the NHS to court last February, and in July said this had contributed to a reversal of policy when NHS Hartlepool and Stockton-on-Tees Clinical Commissioning Group said it would seek an alternative provider to run a comprehensive assisted reproductive service including licensed and unlicensed provision in Hartlepool.

But the CCG has now said it cannot find any suitable provider and the service must close, sparking a fresh threat of legal action from the council.

In a statement last week, the CCG said: “Due to a limited response from the provider market and the bids received not meeting the required quality standards, we have not been successful in securing a provider that can offer both licensed and unlicensed fertility services at Hartlepool.”

It said it would work with existing NHS commissioned providers to deliver unlicensed services in Hartlepool and patients found to need licensed fertility services “will then be offered this at the base site of their chosen provider”.

Ray Martin-Wells, chair of Hartlepool's audit and governance committee, said: “I’m astounded that the CCG haven’t been able to find a suitable alternative provider of licensed fertility services as I’ve spoken to many potential providers personally.”

He said some providers had found the CCG’s procurement process “unhelpful, uncooperative and at times extremely difficult to deal with” and that the council would take advice on whether it could take further legal action to prevent the loss of the service.

The council’s earlier action caused ill-feeling, with North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Trust chair Paul Garvin noting in a May newsletter that an agreement with the council on consultation “was approved by the High Court, on substantially the same terms as proposed by the trust in February, although it is disappointing that the council felt the need to resort to litigation, which was unnecessary and a waste of public funds”.

A report to the trust board in May said the assisted reproduction unit was used by only some 180 patients a year, of whom some 20% were from Hartlepool.

Mark Smulian