This template Council Motion is based on a motion from Sheffield Liberal Democrats calling for national action on the crisis facing health and social care services in local communities and local authorities.
You can find the original motion from Sheffield here.
The motion makes use of official NHS statistics that breaks down the wait time between booking and attending NHS appointments for each NHS Trust. This can be further broken down by appointment type, such as GP, to give you an overall picture of how many appointment wait times in your area were unacceptably long.
The template motion is below. Remember to adapt it for you area. You may have local details you can add it, such as overspends in Council Health and Social Care budgets to emphasise the scale of the issue in your authority.
This Council notes:-
- That the NHS and social care system face multiple crises of access, staff retention, long waiting times, missed targets and poor outcomes;
- That people across [AREA NAME] are struggling to access health and care services;
- That in 2024 almost [XX,XXX] GP appointments in [AREA NAME] took place more than two weeks after booking, representing [XX%] of all appointments that year;
- That despite this, primary care providers have not been given the funding to employ more GPs, leaving qualified doctors facing unemployment;
- That there is a national dentistry crisis as increasing numbers of practitioners leave the NHS;
- That the Adult Social Care and Education and Children’s Care budgets face significant pressure to continue to deliver savings in 2025/26 in the context of increasing demand for services;
- That difficulty accessing services increases pressure on acute care such as Accident & Emergency as well as undermining overall population health.;
- That both The King’s Fund and the new Secretary of State for Health and Social Care have acknowledged the positive vision the Liberal Democrats have for social care reform and that cross-party working is the only way to achieve this.
This Council advocates for:-
- Cross-party collaboration both locally through the Health and Wellbeing Board and nationally through a long-term agreement on funding and provision of social care.
This Council resolves to:
- Call for the establishment of a cross-party commission to forge a long-term agreement on predictable, consistent funding for free personal care;
- Call for an Emergency Health and Care Budget to put this national crisis at the top of the new government’s agenda.
- Instruct the Chief Executive to convey these calls to the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care
Sources