Warwick councillor brands lack of answers over 'very deprived' area of town's health hub as 'outrageous'

A councillor has described the lack of progress – and answers – over an 18-year-old plan to improve health outcomes in Packmores in Warwick.as “outrageous”.

Councillor John Holland, continued his pursuit of clarity at a meeting of the county’s Health and Wellbeing Board last week.

Dr Shade Agboola, the county’s director of public health, asked to discuss the matter outside the meeting but Cllr Holland confirmed the conversation had yet to take place.

During the meeting, he referred back to plans laid out in 2005 for the county council to provide a building for services to address health inequalities.

Last year, the opportunity to temporarily house such services in the vacant former Priory Road Medical Centre came up.

The county council bought it in 2022 and the authority’s cabinet rejected a bid to repurpose it into a community centre.

It was agreed, in line with a recommendation from professionals at the county, to lease it to SWFT to “enable its short-to-medium term use for the delivery of outpatient support in Warwick”.

However, Cllr Holland told the Local Democracy Reporting Service this week that he had checked within the past month whether the lease had been enacted but that “nothing has happened”.

In the meeting, he said: “The joint strategic needs assessment identified several hundred needs across the county in 2019 and last year we passed a resolution in county council that the needs would be met through the place boards and the Health & Wellbeing Board.

“When we last had a briefing, the only project where there was any progress at all was at the Packmores Centre to provide premises for health programmes in a very deprived area.

“I have here a published document from the county council together with the NHS and Warwick District Council where the top project is to provide the Packmores Centre. This document is dated September 2005.

“I have to say it is to the credit of Warwick District Council that they have kept going with this project over the 18 years, waiting for the county council to deliver their part, which is to provide the building.

“We purchased a redundant surgery in the Cape Road car park last year so we could get going on this and at the last minute it was blocked by the county council’s cabinet.

"A year later and the building is still standing empty.

“Public health comes out of this with a lot of credit, they are on board with the needs of the area, but from September 2005 when the document was published, and the county’s decision to provide the building was taken before that, 18 years is a pretty long time to wait.”

“A lot of the health issues will have ended in a personal tragedy for individual residents, we were quite clear what the health needs were.

“Can we have a date for when the county council will enact its decision?”

Dr Agboola replied: “We have had several conversations about this, Councillor Holland, and exchanged quite a number of emails. I would like to ask if we could carry on the conversation after the board, please.”

Having confirmed he had yet to hear from Dr Agboola, Cllr Holland said: “If you ask people how they would like to receive medical treatment, everyone would say they didn’t want to be ill in the first place.

“This would help to prevent illness by supporting the local community. The county council published a glossy booklet in September 2005 where this was the top project and it seems outrageous that we are still waiting for it.”

“I remember at that time that the partners in the project started trying to provide health programmes but the suitable premises had not been provided by the county council. It is astonishing that we are still in exactly the same position 18 years later.”

Warwickshire County Council has been approached but has yet to provide a comment.