Eleventh report from the Select Committee on Estimates : together with the minutes of evidence taken before sub-committee E and appendices, session 1950-1951: regional hospital boards and hospital management committees.
- Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Select Committee on Estimates
- Date:
- [1951]
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Eleventh report from the Select Committee on Estimates : together with the minutes of evidence taken before sub-committee E and appendices, session 1950-1951: regional hospital boards and hospital management committees. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![8 February, 1951.] [Continued. 529. First of all, you say that your original scheme proposed twenty-two groups of hospitals?—Yes, it did. 530. That was modified by the Minister to make thirty such groups?—Yes. May lI correct that? It should be twenty-nine. We have thirty, but we put on the thirtieth. They put on the seven. 531. This ais. very “important, Your original proposal was twenty-two?—Yes. 532. The Ministry then proposed twenty- nine?—Yes. 533. And you yourselves then added the thirtieth? —-Yes. I can explain that quite simply, if it is convenient to do it now. The thirtieth is Sheffield No. 4 which was associated with a former radium institute. It was linked up with the Radium Commission, and all the radio-therapy work for a substantial area around Sheffield was transacted and dealt with through this institute. In order to link up the radio-therapy work in the Region, Sheffield No. 4 was set up and it really controls the former institute. There is a large out-patients’ department, and it is linked up with the centres at Lincoln, Derby, Leicester, Nottingham and Scun- thorpe. You can almost call them sub- centres or sub-institutes of this one institute. It was desirable to get the whole thing bound up together, and therefore we set up. Sheffield’ No.°4 . to do” that. * The alternative was to form a sub-committee of the Board. We thought this was better because we could put on the committee specialists who are connected with the work. 534. It is a very special case?—It is a very special case, and it has worked wonderfully well. 535. Can you say what sort of principle you applied in arriving at these groups of hospitals?—Yes. We tried to find a centre, and group around that centre a number of hospitals giving a bed complement of something like a thousand. 536. That was your yardstick, was it, a thousand beds?—Yes. You cannot always do it. There is a hospital and three or four more round it. You cannot possibly get a thousand beds, but the situa- tion of the group in relation to any other hospital is such that you cannot attach it because there has been no contact between the two. We tried to take the view that even in one town we could have three or four thousand beds governed by one management committee. The Minister always takes the view that that is too many, and it is better to have some- thing between one and two thousand. It is with very great reluctance that he would approve the setting up of a management committee which controlled many more than two thousand beds. 537. Have you changed your views in the light of experience?—No. 538. Or do you think you were right?— I have not even thought about it. We are working very amicably. One thing we have discovered is that the local hospital is as much an institution as is the local town hall. People regard it as their institution. If they are simply lifted as a group and attached to somewhere else, to an adjacent town with which they have had very little to do, they do not like it. It loses its identity ; it loses its interest ; and if you are going to maintain local interest you must have local representatives ; and that is best achieved by having probably a smaller group round that particular town. 539. Can I ask you this question, which I think will be a little less embarrassing to you perhaps? Has your Board as such ever made any representations to the Minister as regards the grouping of the hospitals for which you are responsible?—Since the scheme, no, with this variation—occasion- ally we have to transfer a clinic from one management committee to another. 540. Those would be minor alterations? —Minor adjustments. 541. You have rather suggested that a hidebound yardstick relating to the number of beds does not really go far enough, and that there are other considerations of which local patriotism is a very important one? —vVery important indeed. 542. I think you have rather suggested that in your own view perhaps not enough weight has been given to local patriotism, and rather too much weight to administra- tive titles?—That is one point. The Minister’s point was from his own experience, and it was our experience, too, that the West Riding of Yorkshire Mental Hospitals Board controlled about five mental hospitals with two or three thousand beds each. The Minister regarded that as too large for one administrative unit, and he probably went a little bit too far the other way. That and the Lancashire Board were considered to be too large, and certainly not satisfactory units. I will say, although I am a Sheffield man, that I agree with him. If I may go off the record for a moment I will say this was not an efficient unit ; it was too big. Wing Commander. Geoffrey Cooper.] Why should that be off the record? If we do not have full and fair criticism we shall not get anywhere. Chairman. 543. I think Sir Basil is bound to give evidence here in his capacity as chairman of a regional board?—I was Town Clerk and Deputy Town Clerk of Sheffield for 20 years. I had a tremendous lot to do with this West Riding of Yorkshire Mental Hospitals Board. I was responsible for the promotion of a Bill to get out of](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b32182478_0090.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
