WATCHDOGS in England’s largest county are demanding an urgent meeting with health chiefs about the future of local services.

The proposed Sustainability and Transformation Plans cover 44 different areas of the country and are intended to accelerate the implementation of an NHS five-year efficiency plan as well as developing new models of care and improving health and wellbeing.

It comes as the British Medical Association found that the STPs will have to deliver £22bn in cuts by 2020 to 2021 in order to balance health and social care spending – raising serious concerns on the impact on patient care.

North Yorkshire’s health scrutiny committee is concerned the plans are being rushed through and are modelled around the needs of urban centres – therefore threatening to take funds from rural areas.

A BMA survey found more than two thirds of doctors nationally say they have not been consulted on STPS, a third have never heard of them, and a fifth do not support the plans.

The health body has “serious concerns” about the way some of the STPs have been put together and that they will be used as a cover for delivering cuts.

North Yorkshire is one of very few counties that are covered by three STPs and they are based around the large urban areas of Leeds and Bradford, Middlesbrough, and Hull.

The watchdogs fear that will mean the focus for planning services is likely to be on large acute hospitals outside of the county and not necessarily upon the more local health services currently in place in North Yorkshire.

“North Yorkshire is being carved up into three different health areas based upon assumptions that make no sense for the delivery of services to the people of North Yorkshire,” said committee chairman Jim Clark.

“There is a real risk that health funding will be diverted away from services in the county to large, urban areas nearby.”

The county council is now actively asking the Secretary of State and NHS England to review the planned boundaries and create one STP for North Yorkshire.

“Our real concerns remain that the STP planning process is overly focussed upon short term savings targets, being rushed through, that there has been little involvement from organisations outside of the NHS and that patients and the public are not being engaged,” said Cllr Clark.

The committee has been told that the financial gap that the three STPs will have to bridge by April 2021 was estimated to be £1,750m – and members believe the only way that could be realistically achieved would be through significant cuts to services.

He said the committee agreed the NHS had to change but added: “We believe the STPs as they are currently defined represent a missed opportunity."