VERY best wishes to you all for 2023 and thanks to the newspaper for giving me the opportunity to express concern at some proposed changes to local accountability health provision.

The future of local run health and social care partnerships is under threat with Scottish Government proposals to remove control from councils and health boards by moving its leadership to Ministers. Many are opposed from staff, COSLA (the body representing all local authorities) and now many MSPs.

The National Care Service Bill was introduced to Scottish Parliament in July 2022. This Bill seeks to make Scottish Ministers accountable for adult social care in Scotland. COSLA has expressed concern that, if the current version of the bill is passed, this would result in significant cuts to both budgets and decision-making powers for Scotland’s councils.

Council leaders believe this additional money would be better spent improving access to front-line care services and helping the care sector cope with the cost-of-living crisis, spiralling energy costs and long-term recruitment pressures.

The draft legislation comes following the 2021 Independent Review of Adult Social Care, commissioned by Ministers which suggested a number of improvements to the provision of services. COSLA estimated that the recommendations in the review would cost £1.5 billion to implement, far more than any plans currently outlined by the Scottish Government.

Efforts should be on improvements that can and should be made to care services now rather than on costly and disruptive structural change.

At a time when social care services are under extreme pressure, funding should be directed at addressing the many challenges the sector faces rather than the priority being the complex, time-consuming and unsettling transfer of Local Government staff and assets into a centralised structure.

We know that many of the issues within the current care system are a result of years of cuts to local government and underfunding. Despite this, staff in social care have worked extremely hard to provide care to the increasing number of people who need it in our communities. We know that this growing demand and the growing complexity of need mean that all our resources should be focussed on addressing these issues.

The Scottish Government’s National Care Service proposals, as they currently stand, fail to offer the investment needed to help make improvements and ease pressure on staff, services and improve the experience of service users in our local medical practices and across the Partnership’s services.

Indeed, some believe this could just be another move to remove powers from councils, weaken local government by centralisation and remove local decision making.