Mr Luke March has been appointed as chair of the Western Berkshire Accountable Care System - a collaboration of the principal NHS organisations in Western Berkshire. We are facing a period of several years in which NHS funding growth will be around 1% per year on average - hardly enough to keep up with population growth, let alone the ageing of the population, increasing living standards or advances in medicine.

The British Medical Association (BMA), the doctors' trade union, has announced that doctors in training ("junior doctors" - who can be any grade below consultant and may be in their mid-thirties) will hold 5-day all-out strikes in October, November and December but the strike announced for December has been called off.

The Government's plan for reducing childhood obesity was published on 18th August 2016 (see attached file). Most reviews were unfavourable. The King's Fund has published an analysis and a comparison of the plan with the recommendations of the Health Select Committee of the House of Commons . The Government's plan has no definite objective but expects to significantly reduce England's rate of childhood obesity within the next ten years.

South Reading CCG Governing Body meets in public and holds its annual meeting on Wednesday 7th September, 2016 at the Museum Of English Rural Life, Redlands Road, RG1 5EX. 

Governing Body Meeting in Public - 9.30am - 11.45am

Questions for the Governing Body (taken at the end of the meeting) should be sent to ppiteam.berkshirewest@nhs.net or given by phone at 0118 982 2709 before noon on 6th September.

Our local 111 urgent care and advice telephone service is being recommissioned. You can help shape the future service by taking part in a consultation meeting on 13th September from 9.00am to 1.00pm at the Holiday Inn, Basingstoke Road, Reading, RG2 0SL. At the consultation meeting the preferred provider of the new service - Care UK - will present its vision and take feedback and input from the meeting attendees. Care UK is one of the UK's largest private providers of health care services.