An elected member of Fife’s health board’s call for the council to forgo millions of pounds being spent on road improvements has been rejected by the council’s leader.
John Winton, who was voted on to NHS Fife’s board last year, believes Fife Council should effectively waive the £2.3 million being spent on road widening at Chapel Level in Kirkcaldy so the money can be reinvested into the health service.
This is despite an agreement being reached for the work more than three years ago.
The work is being carried out to ease traffic congestion in the area as a result of the new wing at Kirkcaldy’s Victoria Hospital, which is due to open next year, with NHS Fife giving the council £2.3 million towards the project.
Around £1 million of that has already been paid.
Stressing the money is more needed elsewhere, Mr Winton pointed out that the NHS has recently spent £250,000 to assist with the delayed discharge situation, and that that had followed some £3 million the board put up to ease the same problem two years ago.
He went on to say NHS Fife had also incurred associated costs by opening extra beds at Cameron Hospital to accommodate delayed discharge patients, even though the patient costs are primarily the responsibility of Fife Council.
He said, “I now find that Fife Council had in 2007, as part of planning gain, demanded £2.3 million from NHS Fife for road widening well over quarter of a mile from the hospital.
“Whilst planning gain demands are normal practice, to take such sums from a health board’s capital budget is quite frankly immoral. Already there have been delays to capital work at Queen Margaret Hospital and Victoria Hospital tower due to lack of funds available.Capital budgets squeezed”With capital budgets from the government likely to be further squeezed this year, I call on all Fife councillors to forgo the sum outstanding and return the £1 million already paid to allow vital health projects to proceed rather than ‘nice to have’ road improvements.
“I am mindful that some of these same councillors who voted through this planning gain will have to face their electorate in the next two years.”
However, council leader Peter Grant confirmed that the arrangements had been put in place some years ago and had been agreed by both parties.
“Firstly I don’t think ‘planning gain’ exists in Scotland,” he said. “Secondly, publicly available documents strongly indicate that the road improvements were identified by NHS Fife as a necessary element not ‘nice to have’ of their planning application. They were not ‘demanded’ unilaterally by the council.
“If they had been, NHS Fife would have had the same rights as any other applicant to appeal against any planning conditions they thought were unreasonable.
“I’m pretty sure they did not exercise this right so we can only assume that those who were responsible for running NHS Fife at the time agreed that they were reasonable.”
Mr Grant added that Fife Council and NHS Fife’s shared view is to serve the population of Fife and that the needs of the people should come before any individual organisation’s interests.
“This is how we have addressed very difficult issues, including delayed discharges, in the past and it’s how we’ll continue to address them in the future,” he added.
“It would be in the best interests of everyone in Fife if all elected members of Fife Council and NHS Fife could spend less time trying to drive wedges between our two organisations and more time supporting the joint work that is going on to overcome the many challenges we all face.”