NHS Tayside has paid out almost £80,000 in just five months to taxi staff from Angus to Dundee under the controversial interim closure arrangements of the Mulberry adult mental health ward at Stracathro Hospital.
Angus Council’s leader has described the £500-per-day taxi bill as “extravagant” and said he feared the unit within the £20 million Susan Carnegie centre at the Angus facility would become the victim of a “self-fulfilling prophecy” under a review of Tayside services which campaigners believe will signal the dealt knell for the Mulberry.
The taxi fares total emerged from a Freedom of Information request relating to the cost of transporting Angus staff to Carseview in Dundee since February.
A junior doctors’ crisis forced the decision to move Angus General Adult Psychiatry (GAP) inpatients to Carseview from the 25-bed Mulberry ward.
The Rowan and Willow wards at the Susan Carnegie centre have continued to provide care for psychiatry of old age patients, but under the interim arrangement Mulberry staff are taxied to work in the city.
The FOI response revealed a total bill for the five-month period from February to June of £79,166.
Monthly breakdown figures were: February £14,800; March £16,616; April £15,028; May £16,839 and June £15,879.
A consultation on the future of adult mental health services in Tayside is running until October, but Angus Council leader Bob Myles said his fear is that the handling of the Mulberry situation has already determined the outcome.
“I am sure the general public in Angus are more than happy to pay for their health provision, but they probably didn’t expect such an extravagant figure to be going on taxi fares,” said Councillor Myles.
“I’m very disappointed the way the whole thing has been handled.
“They blamed the interim closure on not being able to attract staff and I think that’s a bit of a cheek when the word was already out that the Mulberry was closing.
“It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy — of course no-one will apply to work somewhere if they think it is going to be closed.
“If a bright future was being promoted for it then I don’t think they’d have had any problems attracting people to work there and I think the whole thing has been engineered as an excuse to close it.
“It seems crazy that we have a good facility here in Angus and they have changed the goal posts and used the wrong parameters for assessing it.”
Perth and Kinross Health and Social Care Partnership host GAP inpatient services in Tayside and the partnership’s chief officer, Robert Packham said, “As part of the interim relocation of the Mulberry ward to Carseview, we developed a travel plan for staff affected by the move.
“This included a range of different transport options.
“In normal circumstances, any permanent change of work place would be managed for each member of staff under the NHS Tayside Organisational Change Policy.
“As the contingency plan required staff to move with their patients, these special arrangements are in place to maintain safe and sustainable care for patients and to support the staff through this period.
“We continue to monitor and review the transport requirements for staff and to make adjustments as required.”
