After consultation starting in late 2024 and the Government's 3-year Spending Review, the NHS 10-year plan for health in England is published.
Please click here to access the plan in various formats and its executive summary.
For an easier introduction try:
Corrected 10 July 205 to reflect uncertainty as to how local Healthwatch will be carried forward.
According to BBC reports the Government is to abolish over 200 supervisory organisations in the health service, including Healthwatch England, the Office of the National Guardian, which is supposed to support whistleblowers and offer training related to whistle blowing and the Health Services Safety Investigations Board.
It is unclear how local Healthwatch bodies, such as Healthwatch Reading, will go forward.
Healthwatch Reading represents patients on the Reading Health and Wellbeing Board and in many discussions on the commissioning of health services with the BOB Integrated Care Board. Will this continue as before?
Our view is that the NHS should adopt a no-fault approach to medical errors and encourage whistle-blowing rather than abolishing the body supposedly supporting whistle blowers.
The BOB (Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire West) NHS Integrated Care Board will meet online at 13.30 on Tuesday 8th Jul 2025.
The Reading Health and Wellbeing Board will meet at 2pm on Friday 11th July 2025, online and in the Council Chamber of the Civic Offices, Bridge Street. To obtain an online link please email nicky.simpson@reading.gov.uk.
Reading Patient Voice Group meets at 6pm on Wednesday 16th July to hear Prof Carol Wagstaff of Reading University talking about work on health inequalities with Berkshire Healthcare. We will also discuss our preliminary contacts with the Patient Voice groups of West Berkshire and Wokingham, first thoughts on the NHS 10-year plan and local healthcare matters.
Please find below the agenda for the meeting.
BOB Integrated Care Board has made arrangements for the Urgent Care Centre at Broad Street Mall to be moved to the Royal Berkshire Hospital main site at Craven Road, Reading from 1st July 2025. The facility is no longer a walk-in facility. Patients must phone 111 or use 111.nhs.uk online to obtain advice and direction to an appropriate facility, which may include referral to the Urgent Care Centre. Patients could also be referred there by the Royal Berks A&E department or their GP surgery.
The Urgent Care Centre at the Royal Berkshire Hospital will be operated by Primary Care Partners Ltd, which is noted as a wholly owned subsidiary of Operose Health Ltd. Operose Health Ltd was the subject of a BBC news investigation some years ago.
The Reading Urgent Care Centre will be open from 8am to 8pm every day of the year. Further information about the centre is here.
The latest issue of the BOB ICB newsletter explains that the BOB area - Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire West, will grow by adding East Berkshire, comprised of the boroughs of Bracknell Forest, Windsor and Maidenhead and Slough. This include Frimley Park hospital and much of the Frimley ICB area. The government is requiring ICB areas to be coterminous with local authority boundaries. BOB ICB already has the same chair as Frimley ICB in Dr Priya Singh. Berkshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust is the NHS provider of mental health services and community health services across Berkshire as a whole, so this move simplifies their environment.
To mark World Continence Week the Berkshire Healthcare Bowel and Bladder Bus will be visiting Morrisons in Basingstoke Road from 10.00 to 14.30 on Tueday 17th June 2025.
Reading Patient Voice Group will meet at 6pm on Wednesday 18th June 2025 The Director of Public Health will speak about his area of responsibility in Reading - our public health.
Please click this link to join the meeting.
There will be a special event for Dementia Week at 2pm on Friday 23rd May 2025 at the Reading Biscuit factory on Oxford Road outside Broad Street Mall. The event is sponsored by the Alzheimer's Society and the National Institute of Health Research, Oxford and Thames Valley Applied Research Collaboration.
Attendees will see a film, "Life in Embrace", about dementia care in the UK and India and hear from researchers about the state of knowledge and treatment of dementia.
Registration is required - please email arc_oxtv@phc.ox.ac.uk with your name and the number of places you require.
The event is wheel-chair accessible and the screening is dementia friendly.
A poster for the event is attached.
