• Sajid Javid, the Secretary of State for the department for Health and Social Care, met with healthcare staff and local residents to outline his reform agenda.
• Community representatives, volunteers and medical experts views sought on a more joined up NHS and adult social care sector to better serve staff and patients in the region, and aid COVID-19 recovery.
• Visits are part of a week-long national tour focusing on COVID-19 recovery, tackling the backlog of people waiting for treatment, social care reform, integration and reducing health inequalities.

Health and Social Care Secretary Sajid Javid today visited the East of England to see the amazing work being carried out by health and social care staff. While there, he met with local residents and set out how a more joined up health and care system will mean better care for everyone.

In total, he visited four sites across the region in the first day of his ‘Road to Recovery’ tour:

• Willows Care Home in Romford
• Essex Urgent Community Response Team in Rochford
• Clacton Diagnostic Centre
• Cambridge Biomedical Campus

Health and Social Care Secretary Sajid Javid said:

It’s been incredible to see first-hand the astonishing work being carried out by health and social care staff across the East of England, and I’ve enjoyed speaking to local residents and hearing what they would like from our healthcare services as we recover from COVID-19.

As we continue on the road to recovery, I want to thank everyone in Clacton, Romford, Rochford and the wider region who’ve shared their thoughts and experiences with me and who have given me the opportunity to talk about my mission to reform services so they better serve their needs.

We know integrated care can help boost recovery times, reduce waiting lists and level up the health of the nation and I was proud to see local services working together in the East of England to achieve this.

The tour began at Willows Care Home in Romford, where the Health and Social Care Secretary met with staff, residents and leading figures in the care industry to discuss how working with other local services and the NHS can better serve them.

Joined up health and care systems which work together through shared records, earlier intervention and greater transparency will help deliver a world leading system. This will include using modern technology to monitor seizures, breathing and falls, for example.

It comes after the publication last week of the government’s new Integration White Paper, setting out plans to bring the NHS and local government closer together to improve care for all and ensure greater value for money. It will mean people receiving the right support in the right place at the right time and follows the publication of a 10 year vision to reform adult social care, backed by an extra £5.4billion.

Following a collaborative partnership between three health trusts, the Urgent Community Response Team (UCRT) was formed which provides vital home care and equipment to support people remaining at home. Referrals are made by ambulance crews, GPs or other health professionals and the UCRT then provides medical treatment and support. The Health and Social Care Secretary was able to see a successful example of integration with action already taking place when he met with the team.

This visit was followed by one to Clacton’s £22 million Community Diagnostic Centre (CDC), which will be one of the sites playing a crucial role in tackling the COVID-19 backlog by increasing access to services including x-rays, MRI and CT scans for local residents in the region.

Last week, the government and NHS set out the COVID Backlog Recovery Plan to help reduce waiting times and give patients more control over their care. With six million people waiting for treatment across England, a key part of the plan is opening over 100 Community Diagnostic Centres like the one in Clacton as part of plans to provide an extra eight million scans, checks and operations in the next three years.

These plans are part of the government’s commitment to tackling health disparities and deprivation by levelling up communities. Tendring is a district identified as requiring more assistance including in the Health in Coastal Communities report by Chief Medical Officer Sir Professor Chris Whitty where he wrote about the specific challenges being faced by seaside towns. Furthermore, analysis by the Kings Fund shows people in deprived areas are almost twice as likely to experience a wait of over a year for treatment. By bringing diagnostic services closer to home, in one-stop-shops, they will have a key role in levelling up healthcare across the East of England.

As part of his visit, the Health and Care Secretary was keen to hear from local residents. He took part in a wide ranging town hall discussion in Clacton with voluntary and community representatives from across diverse backgrounds to discuss the specific challenges they face, plans to tackle the COVID-19 backlog, disparities in the area and how the Elective Recovery Plan, Integration White Paper and upcoming Health Disparities White Paper could help address these challenges.

The first day of the tour finished at the Cambridge Biomedical Campus where the Health and Social Care Secretary sat down with representatives from Cambridge University Hospitals and leading scientists from industry and the University of Cambridge, including cancer and genetics experts, to hear about advances in cutting edge research and treatments.

The Road to Recovery tour will continue across English regions this week to highlight plans for recovery and reform.

Laird MacKay, Chief Operating Officer, Canford Healthcare said:

It was our great pleasure to welcome Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Mr Sajid Javid, Professor Green, CEO Care England and Andrew Rosindell, MP for Romford, to Willows Care Home.

They were interested to hear about the experiences of the pandemic, the challenges that we faced, and the support that we feel is needed within the sector moving forward. We have wonderful staff at the home who talked with pride about the care they provide and the opportunities that there are to create a career within the sector”.

Alex Green, Executive Chief Operating Officer at Essex Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust (EPUT) said:

We were delighted to show Mr Javid exactly how the Urgent Care Response Team operates, from receiving an urgent call to providing timely care for a patient in need.

The service is not only helping to reduce demand on our hospitals but provides an improved experience of care for patients by enabling them to recover in the comfortable and familiar surroundings of their own homes.

Our aim for the future is to deliver further community support like this for at least another 1,500 people per year as the service expands.

Helen Taylor, Chair of East Suffolk and North Essex NHS Foundation Trust said:

We were delighted to welcome the Secretary of State for Health Sajid Javid to Clacton Hospital today and to show him how we are currently providing more diagnostic tests to local people and to see our exciting plans for a brand new community diagnostic centre. The new centre will bring much easier and quicker access to diagnostic tests but will also provide employment and regeneration to this important coastal town”.

Background

• The delivery plan for tackling the COVID-19 backlog of elective care was published on 8 February 2022
• The Integration White Paper was published on 9 February 2022

Tough new measures that will force industry to pay to remove cladding and protect leaseholders from exorbitant costs have been unveiled by Secretary of State for Levelling Up Michael Gove today (14 February 2022).

For those in industry not doing the right thing, the government will be able to block planning permission and building control sign-off on developments, effectively preventing them from building and selling new homes.

The proposals will see the industry pay to fix historical problems, freeing hundreds of thousands of innocent leaseholders from shouldering an unfair financial burden while also enforcing a common-sense approach to avoid unnecessary work.

The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities remains in ongoing discussions with industry leaders – who agree that leaseholders should not pay cladding removal costs – with progress being made. However, for those unwilling to make commitments, the Secretary of State has been clear he is ready to act.

Reflecting the scale of the problem, the government will also be able to apply its new building safety levy to more developments, with scope for higher rates for those who do not participate in finding a workable solution.

The government hopes to not have to use these powers; it wants responsible developers and manufacturers to operate freely and with confidence, to help deliver the homes people need. If they do not act responsibly, they must face commercial and financial consequences.

Alongside further leaseholder legal protections, courts will also be given new powers to stop developers using shadowy shell companies, which make them difficult to trace or identify who they are run by, so they can avoid taking responsibility for their actions.

If passed by Parliament, these amendments to the Building Safety Bill will be brought into law.

Secretary of State for Levelling Up Michael Gove said:

It is time to bring this scandal to an end, protect leaseholders and see the industry work together to deliver a solution.

These measures will stop building owners passing all costs on to leaseholders and make sure any repairs are proportionate and necessary for their safety.

All industry must play a part, instead of continuing to profit whilst hardworking families struggle.

We cannot allow those who do not take building safety seriously to build homes in the future, and for those not willing to play their part they must face consequences.

We will take action to keep homes safe and to protect existing leaseholders from paying the price for bad development.

Cost Contribution Orders will be able to be placed on manufacturers who have been successfully prosecuted under construction products regulations. These orders will require them to pay their fair share on buildings requiring remediation. It is wrong that, until now, a manufacturer could be found guilty of misconduct but could not be charged to fix the problems they caused in selling defective products.

Amendments to the Building Safety Bill, revealed today, will also allow building owners and landlords to take legal action against manufacturers who used defective products on a home that has since been found unfit for habitation. The power will stretch back 30 years and allow recovery where costs have already been paid out.

New clauses will also enshrine in law the commitment the Levelling Up Secretary made in the House of Commons last month that no leaseholder living in their own home, or sub-letting in a building over 11m, ever pays a penny for the removal of dangerous cladding.

If passed by Parliament, these clauses will hugely reduce the invoices that have been sent to leaseholders for taking down cladding, in some cases for over £100,000.

The provisions announced today will also go further than the package outlined last month by protecting leaseholders on non-cladding costs. Under the plans, developers that still own a building over 11m that they built or refurbished – or landlords linked to an original developer – will be required to pay in full to fix historic building safety issues in their property.

Building owners who are not linked to the developer but can afford to pay in full will also be required to put up the money to do so.

In the small number of cases where building owners do not have the resources to pay, leaseholders will be protected by a cap. The cap will be set at similar levels to ‘Florrie’s Law’ which applies to some repairs to social housing: £10,000 for homes outside London and £15,000 for homes in the capital. This will limit how much leaseholders in this scenario can be asked to pay for non-cladding costs, including waking watch charges.

Any costs paid out by leaseholders over the past 5 years will count towards the cap, meaning some leaseholders will pay nothing more. We will carry out further consultation with parliamentarians and stakeholders before finalising this to ensure that we deliver the right result for leaseholders.

The provisions will protect leaseholders and encourage a more proportionate approach to fixing buildings. Currently, building owners can simply pass all costs on to leaseholders, with no incentive to hold back on unnecessary remediation work that has brought misery to leaseholders.

Today’s package, alongside the duties in the wider Bill, will create an environment for tough, proportionate action on critical safety issues while preventing cost inflation and excessive work.

This follows the Secretary of State’s statement in January, when he set out a 4-point plan to reset the approach to building safety and give leaseholders more protection against unfair costs.

The new leaseholder protections announced today, will allow those less likely to be able to pay to be fully exempted from costs.

In the small number of cases where building owners do not have the resources to pay and the developer cannot be traced, leaseholders will have a ‘Florrie’s Law’ style backstop protection, which caps how much they can be asked to pay for non-cladding costs, including waking watch charges.

Any costs paid out by leaseholders over the past 5 years will count towards the ‘Florrie’s Law’ style caps, meaning some leaseholders will pay nothing more.

The proposed government amendments will be available on the Lords website later on Monday 14 February 2022.

They are due to be debated in the House of Lords during the Committee Stage of the Building Safety Bill which begins on Monday 21 February 2022.