Make PCTs accountable to councils - LGA

Primary care trusts and hospitals should be made accountable to local authorities in the wake of the damning report into Mid-Staffordshire NHS Foundation, the Local Government Association has said.

An independent report by Robert Francis QC this week revealed a catalogue of failures and routine neglect of patients at Stafford Hospital between 2005 and March 2009. Regulators had previously decided that more than 400 people had died at the hospital than would have been expected.

Cllr David Rogers, chair of the LGA’s community wellbeing board, said: “Every service delivered to people in their local area should be directly answerable to local people through their elected council.

“NHS trust directors must be accountable to the elected representatives of the area. This will require changes to the way our state is organised, where central government should continue to do what it does well, but should leave responsibility for local services to those who know the local area best.”

Rogers argued that local people should be given greater influence and greater involvement over the future of the services they want and the places where they live. “This requires stronger, more visible and more accountable local leadership that has the ability to take local decisions and help prevent people dying unnecessarily.”

He added: “New powers to scrutinise a hospital trust would ensure that if an organisation is failing in its duty of providing the right services in the right time and at the right cost, then elected representatives would be able to bring them into line with what local people want.”

Health Secretary Andy Burnham unveiled a package of measures that included a call for greater openness and transparency among foundation trusts, with a presumption that trust boards should meet in public and governors should have access to papers. A new system will be put in place for senior NHS managers.

Robert Francis QC will also a further review into why the commissioning, regulatory and supervisory bodies did not detect the failures further.