North Yorkshire Council looks set to bid for up to £1.7 million worth of funding to help ease pressure on hospital emergency departments.

The Department of Health and Social Care has invited local authorities to apply for grants to help with discharges in social care, which in turn will support accident and emergency units.

Ministers have allocated North Yorkshire as one of the authority areas which has the “greatest health and care challenges”.

The government has given the council an indicative funding amount of £1.1 million, but has encouraged it to apply for up to £1.7 million.

A report by Abigail Barron, assistant director for prevention and service development at the council, has proposed a number of measures as part of the council’s bid.

Among them include employing additional agency social workers to speed up discharge allocations, establishing winter grants for the voluntary sector to help with prevention and developing additional support for unpaid carers.

Ms Barron said the measures would help to “avoid hospital admissions and expedite discharge and flow”.

She added:

“The schemes will also assist North Yorkshire Council’s strategic objective of both supporting hospital discharge and reducing reliance on short stay residential beds.”

Read more:

• Health chief pledges to help patients at Harrogate NHS dentist
• ‘No timeline’ for £1.8m care facility at Cardale Park

The move comes after Harrogate District Hospital managers raised concern that patients were staying in hospital longer than they should because of a lack of private care services.

Last year, Jonathan Coulter, chief executive at Harrogate and District NHS Foundation Trust, said the issue had a knock on effect on emergency departments and was the “biggest issue” that the trust faced.

In September 2022, the trust also outlined plans to launch its own home care service in a bid to free up hospital beds.

At the time, the move was met with some concern by councillors who said it could “distort the market”.

North Yorkshire County Council is set to spend nearly £5 million on agency staff pay this year.

In a report due before the council’s overview and scrutiny committee, the authority forecasts its spend on agency workers has increased from £716,389 in 2020/21 to about £5 million in 2022/23.

Spending reached £4,282,458 in the first three quarters of this year.

Justine Brooksbank, assistant chief executive for business support at the council, said in the report:

“Agency staff are used only in circumstances when all other options have been exhausted, however increasingly scarce labours markets has resulted in the increased use of agency solutions.”

Ms Brooksbank added:

“While this is a significant increase, agency spend remains low compared to other local authorities.

“For instance, other regional council spend: Rotherham £7.47m, York £9.5m, Leeds £10m, Bradford £17m. 

“The largest increases in agency use are due to increasing demand for care workers, social workers and occupational therapists in health and adult services, and for educational psychologists, social workers and children’s residential care workers in children’s services due to both recruitment challenges and increased activity.”

The report said that labour market pressures, particularly in the social care sector, had caused problems with recruiting and retaining staff – which then led to higher agency spend.

It says:

“It has been another demanding and unusual year dominated by a range of service pressures, particularly in the health and social care sector, labour market pressures causing recruitment and retention pressures and higher agency spend, covid and other causes of sickness absence.”

Read more:

• County council to set up new estates company
• Opposition North Yorkshire councillors criticise ‘community networks’ plan
• Knaresborough Town Council to consider bid to run market

County council bosses are “examining the best options” for land at Cardale Park in Harrogate after purchasing it for £1.8 million.

The three-acre site on Beckwith Head Road in Harrogate was previously owned by Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys NHS Foundation Trust, which runs mental health services in the district.

North Yorkshire County Council completed the purchase of the land last year.

At the time, the authority said it had bought the site in order to progress a “scheme to assist with social care market development in the Harrogate area”.

Cllr Michael Harrison, executive county councillor for health and adult services, said the council was now assessing how to use the land.

He said:

“We acquired the Cardale Park site with the intention of increasing the care services available in Harrogate. 

“We are still in the process of examining the best options for meeting the community’s needs and will bring forward a scheme in due course.”

The land was previously given approval for a 36-bed mental health facility on the site, following the closure of Harrogate District Hospital’s Briary Unit, which helped adults with mental illness.

However, those plans were dropped in 2019 and inpatients on the unit were sent to Foss Park Hospital in York instead.

Read more:

• Harrogate ambulance striker: ‘Nobody wants to wait three hours to offload patients’
• County council to buy Cardale Park site for care facility