Sector leaders slam DH for undermining third sector service providers

Sector leaders are up in arms at a decision by the NHS panel responsible for competition rules to drop an enquiry that could help secure the right to provide health services through a social enterprise model.

Yesterday the Co-operation and Competition Panel for NHS-Funded Services dropped a case it had been investigating since 5 January, brought to it by the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations (ACEVO) and the NHS Partners Network.

The case focussed on a decision by NHS Great Yarmouth and Waveney to withdraw a tender opportunity to the community sector after health secretary Andy Burnham described the NHS as the 'preferred provider' of NHS services.

But the panel dropped the case after receiving a letter from the Department of Health (DH) director general in charge of commissioning and system management, Gary Belfield.

Belfield's letter stated new guidance indicating that PCT boards were required to review their future plans and secure DoH 'approval in principle on direction of travel for their preferred option' by 31 March.

ACEVO CEO Stephen Bubb said: 'The decision is sending out a dreadful message to service providers in all sectors - the Department of Health is not on your side. They have effectively gagged their own panel.

'They knew they were going to lose so they just pulled the plug.'

London Early Years Foundation CEO June O'Sullivan, who was part of the panel for Social Enterprise London's (SEL) election hustings event last night said she was deeply worried about the implications for right to request for social enterprises and the mixed messages this was sending.

She said the NHS panel's decision and Andy Burnham's remarks had 'unnerved us' as a sector.

'I'm disappointed that the government hasn't taken a really clear lead in the health service,' said O'Sullivan.

'If they can't take a clear lead in health which has all the money and research spent on it what is the hope for the rest of us?'

The SEL event had heard a call from Dai Powell, HCT CEO, to extend the right to request to all government departments.

Bubb said ACEVO would be issuing several Freedom of Information requests within the next 24 hours 'to shed light on this murky business, which is clearly the result of anticipated failure by the Department of Health'.

Read Bubb's blog on the issue, posted on 4 March at 11.10am, in our new Blog Directory HERE.