HEALTH bosses will this week discuss their plans for the year ahead – and are likely to approve plans to push on with a controversial healthcare re-organisation.

The Hambleton, Richmondshire and Whitby Clinical Commissioning Group will hold an extraordinary governing body meeting on Thursday, December 22, to move its operating plan for 2017 to 2019, which includes details of how its Sustainability and Transformation Plan (STP) will be continued to be brought forward.

In its agenda, the CCG states it will put the NHS England Five Year Forward Plans into operation for 2017 to 2019, and its specific requirements are to measure activity and financial performance, and to continue to implement the STP.

The CCG said it is already “well advanced” with its work with STP colleagues – in an area which covers seven council areas across Teesside, Cleveland, Darlington and County Durham – and has five different CCGs.

North Yorkshire County Council has already expressed concerns about the size and scale of the plans, and fears the rural communities could get left behind in funding to the larger urban areas.

Last week the council’s scrutiny of health committee held a cross-party summit with health leaders in a bid to find out more about the details of the STPs.

Cllr Jim Clark, chairman of the committee, said: “We are concerned by the lack of detail coming forward. While it is accepted that the plans are still under development, we had expected there to be a better sense of the potential impact on health services in the county, in particular how funding is going to be moved from large hospitals to local, community-based services.”

The CCG states in its agenda for this week’s meeting that “The CCG while retaining our organisational autonomy is now also part of a wider footprint for planning purposes – the Durham, Darlington, Teeside, Hambleton, Richmondshire and Whitby Sustainability and Transformation Plan.

“Our STP, while keeping us within North Yorkshire and supporting the local model of care based at the Friarage Hospital as the hub for the rural population, recognises that for acute services patients go to South Tees and County Durham."

"It is clear services we provide cannot continue in their present form."