The Final Decision 28th November 2007
This date has been altered from the original final decision date of October 9th 2007. An extra-ordinary Board meeting still took place as planned on 9th October. Trust Board members discarded all 8 of the alternative proposals submitted. Having then gone on to give an inaccurate summary of feedback received from stakeholders and tweaked the figures for the response from members of the public from 18261 to 257, it feels, as many people have said all along, that the decision's already made. What is the Board going to do for the remaining 7 weeks when it was meant to be considering alternative proposals and the feedback? It'll be letting the situation settle down and hoping all the negative publicity goes away. Hoping too that we'll all be caught up in Christmas shopping and too busy to take much notice when the Board announces its success - it's proposal was the one accepted! That would be because it was the only one voted upon and "no change" had already been ruled out.
The final decision will be confirmed here 28th November.
If the Trust Board had listened to stakeholders and interested parties then the decision would have been made to retain a control in Bransford or Worcester. Instead it steamrollered over every objection in its path and ignoring stakeholders and public alike, concluded that Bransford and Shrewsbury controls should close. Had the consultation process been conducted properly with unions and stakeholders engaged in the consultation before the proposal was put forward, a mutually acceptable proposal would have evolved that received unanimous support. As it is the Trust Board will now move ahead with its proposal without the backing of most of the Herefordshire and Worcester stakeholders. West Mercia's population of 722500 will in future have no local emergency operations control centre. One manager has already voted with his feet and left rather than face anymore uncertainty regarding his future. Another ambulance service now has the benefit of his experience. For this WMAS will pay dearly. It's lost his 12 years experience, the training invested in him and will pay again for his replacement to be trained to his level. These are all "invisible" costs. They don't feature in the WMASTB's business case yet this could be the highest cost of all depending on how many staff follow his lead.
Staff at Bransford and Shrewsbury are in discussion with UNISON as to the viability of requesting a Judicial Review. To quote a posting on the Worcester News site, "whilst the Trust Board may have won the battle, they haven't won the war."