Community health hubs for Wick and Caithness ‘won’t be completed until 2030’
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The community hubs in Wick and Thurso, which are part of a £80 million redesign of health services in Caithness, will not be built until 2030, it has been claimed.
Billy Dunbar, the chairman of Castletown and District Community Council, said the date – four years later than expected – was given by an NHS Highland official at a meeting.
Mr Dunbar said when the redesign project, which includes the community hub and care villages costing £55million and a reconfiguration of Caithness General Hospital in Wick, was mentioned the official said the hubs would not be constructed for another six years.
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Scottish health boards were told to pause any new capital projects until 2026 at the earliest and concentrate on essential maintenance after the Scottish Government said its capital funding was "extremely challenging".
Thurso and Northwest Caithness Highland councillor, Matthew Reiss, was "appalled" to hear about the extended date for the building of the hubs and said it had been stressed the so-called pause in the project would be for two years.
"You have taken my breath away," he stated at last week's meeting of the Castletown and District Community Council after hearing the news about the new date.
"I have no complaint about NHS Highland as they did not know this was coming and we need to support them," he added.
He said up until December last year, the health authority did "not have a clue" about the delay for such projects.
Cllr Reiss said £2.8 million has been spent on the design of the health hubs in Wick and Thurso and claimed that, if the Scottish Government had told the NHS boards across Scotland "a couple of years ago" there was going to be a review of the funding, "some of that money could have been saved instead of being wasted."
He acknowledged there may not be too much extra work to be done on the hubs as a result of the delays but felt the plans for Caithness General may have to be redrawn over the extended timescale.
Mr Dunbar said: "The Scottish Government has pulled the plug on everything."
Councillor Reiss stated: "I think the financial situation is much worse than they are saying it is."
As previously reported, Christian Nicolson, NHS Highland's Caithness district manager, described the pause in the capital funding from the Scottish Government as "a blow" and said it would "impact on our plans".
However, she pointed out that "things which we have started working on will continue to fruition. Anything which has not had a spade in the ground will be paused."
