In the survey and also during our various consultations lots of you have been asking about a replacement to the Ware Road surgery that was closed a couple of years ago. Many of you have told us that patients, sometimes elderly, are having to take a couple of buses to Hoddesdon to visit their GP because when Ware Road GPs was closed there was no additional capacity supplied in Hertford.
To support the policy in the Kingsmead Neighbourhood Plan (KNP) for a GP practice to be provided, either one off clinics or a more permanent facility to assist in providing the 20 minute neighbourhood that is central to the KNP we put in a Freedom of Information request to the NHS East and North Hertfordshire Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) to find out how many people, living in Kingsmead, have to travel outside of Hertford to visit a GP.
Much to our surprise we were told that the CCG, which is responsible for deciding what services should be supplied, didn't hold data on how far people have to travel to their GPs and wouldn't know how many people have to travel out of Hertford to visit a GP. We were also told that they couldn't release the data (that they didn't have) because it would breach GDPR. So, we asked for an internal review as we couldn't work out why they would send something saying they couldn't provide the information because it would breach GDPR if they didn't hold the information.....
We didn't hear back on the request for an internal review so complained to the ombudsman, and finally received a reply that said that the information would be held by NHS Improvement or NHS England or Primary Care Support. Two more FOI requests have been submitted (there doesn't seem to be a way to submit an FOI request to Primary Care Support) so watch this space! We will publish the information once it has been received