Family Solicitors

A judge has ordered North Tees & Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust not to close licensed fertility services at the University Hospital of Hartlepool until a hearing takes place in the High Court, after Hartlepool Borough Council sought an injunction to stop the closure at the end of March 2016.

The decision to apply for an injunction followed a meeting of the council’s Audit & Governance Committee on 26 February, when hospital trust chief Executive Alan Foster and trust’s chairman Paul Garvin failed to turn up for the second time in a fortnight to explain the reasons for the imminent closure of the hospital’s fertility unit.

Instead, the hospital trust was represented at the meeting by the trust’s medical director and a legal representative.

The trust is claiming it has to cease services on safety grounds because it cannot recruit enough embryologists.

However, through the council’s Audit & Governance Committee, a leading fertility expert, the town’s MP Iain Wright, the Royal College of Nursing and Trade Unions have questioned such claims.

Hartlepool councillors were concerned that the hospital trust had not carried out any meaningful consultation on the planned closure – and redundancy notices have already been issued to staff at the unit, with the trust being unwilling to withdraw these, despite an indication that there now should be formal consultation.

Chair of the council’s Audit & Governance Committee, Councillor Ray Martin-Wells, said:

“I am pleased that a High Court judge has intervened to prevent the planned closure of the Unit at the end of March.

“We have been notified by the High Court that there will be a hearing on 5 April and the hospital trust cannot therefore implement closure before then.

“As a council, we are simply not prepared to allow the Trust to ride roughshod over the people of this town.”

Leader of Hartlepool Council, Cllr Christopher Akers-Belcher added:

“Trust bosses had the opportunity to enter into dialogue with the council and the people of this town on two occasions to explain the rationale for the closure, but both times they declined.

“There is a massive strength of feeling throughout the town about the migration of services from the town’s hospital – and we will challenge this all the way.”

At the council’s Audit & Governance Committee on 26 February, Hartlepool MP Iain Wright said it was “utterly contemptuous” and “a disgrace” that Chief Executive Alan Foster and Chairman Paul Garvin had not attended the meeting.

At that meeting, hospital trust representatives requested that the issue be looked at by a Joint Health Scrutiny Committee involving Stockton and Durham councils.

However, Committee Chairman, Councillor Ray Martin-Wells said that both councils had already indicated that they did not want to participate in the exercise, as they felt that it was a matter specifically for Hartlepool.

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