That this House has considered access to healthcare in Bracknell Forest.
It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Mr Mundell. I thank the Minister for Secondary Care, my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol South (Karin Smyth), for her engagement on this important issue.
As local MPs, we all hear on the doorstep and at our coffee mornings about the importance of the ability to access timely, good-quality and local healthcare, and the impact not just on individuals, but on our communities more broadly, when the standard is not met. What those who work in our health and social care system do day in, day out touches all our lives and families. I thank those in Bracknell Forest and across the country who work in our NHS and wider health and care system for everything they do. I must declare an interest: my brother and sister-in-law are both NHS doctors.
These are challenging times for the NHS. Chronic under-resourcing after 14 years of Conservative austerity has left too many unable to access the care they need and has prevented the system from evolving to reflect the needs of today’s Britain. But although the NHS may be down, it is not out. While other parties threaten the very principle of the NHS—that care should be available to everyone and free at the point of use—the Government are investing in the NHS and putting in place the reforms we need. We have already seen those efforts bearing fruit, with the first cuts to waiting lists in 15 years, the recruitment of 2,500 more GPs and the creation of 5 million extra appointments.
I commend the hon. Gentleman for securing this debate. He is right to underline the issue of GPs. Does he agree that access to healthcare must begin with access to the local GP surgery, and that the Government must prioritise training and retraining GPs to ensure that people can access their GP and do not head straight to emergency care at the local hospital when it is not necessary? GPs first—then, everybody else can do better.
The hon. Member predicts where I am going with my speech. I am sure that the issues in Bracknell Forest are similar to those in Northern Ireland. As I will say, it is important that we have seen changes in the way GPs operate in England.
The 10-year health plan for England represents a once-in-a-generation chance to reform and rebuild the health system. It is underpinned by the three radical shifts of hospital to community, analogue to digital and sickness to prevention. In Bracknell Forest, we have already seen the Government’s commitment to moving healthcare to the community through the announcement of funding for the Frimley Park hospital rebuild, which was promised under the last Government but never funded, despite unsafe reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete making up about 65% of the current building. The funding will go directly to help to deliver a hospital that is safe, modern and equipped to deal with the demands facing our healthcare system today.
I thank the Minister for meeting me yesterday, and on many other occasions, to discuss the rebuild, and for all the work that has gone into progressing the project behind the scenes, but as she knows I remain concerned that Frimley Health NHS foundation trust is still not in a position to announce the location of the new hospital, despite several deadlines already having been set and missed. I urge the trust to make that announcement as soon as practically possible, so that constituents can have the visibility and transparency they need on the delivery of those plans.
Bracknell Forest residents are determined that the new hospital addresses the existing issues with access to Frimley Park hospital, including insufficient parking, and that it should be as close as possible to the current site. Better access by public transport also needs to be baked into the design. Constituents also have concerns about the ongoing need to rebuild the Royal Berkshire hospital. I take this opportunity to reassure them that I am as keen as they are to see that delivered as soon as possible, and I will continue to push for it in this place.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon, Mr Mundell. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bracknell (Peter Swallow) on securing this important debate. He has made absolutely sure that the voice of Bracknell Forest is heard loud and clear, both here and at the Department of Health and Social Care. We know that the NHS faces pressure all over the country, including in Bracknell Forest and the south-east of England. I also thank his brother and sister-in-law for their work to ensure that people get a good service.
Our 10-year health plan is a plan to fix the issues, with the three shifts improving access to healthcare for everyone, no matter where they live or how much they earn. We are seeing improvements, with 5 million more elective appointments, 135,000 more cancer diagnoses within the 28-day target, and waiting lists cut by more than 230,000 since we came into office. Ambulance response times are down, including in Bracknell Forest, which has seen significant improvements in category 2 response times compared with last year. Twelve-hour waits in A&E are also down nationally and there are 2,500 more GPs. Over 100 community diagnostic centres have been opened at weekends and evenings, and new surgical hubs are helping to tackle the backlog.
Let me turn to the important local issues that my hon. Friend raised. First, on RAAC, the safety of our patients and staff will always come first, which is why we continue working to eradicate RAAC across the NHS estate, backed by £440 million this year. It is because of that investment that we can continue to invest in crucial RAAC mitigation safety work at Frimley Park hospital. However, our investment in local hospitals goes significantly further, with a new Frimley Park hospital being planned. Since he became a Member of Parliament, my hon. Friend has been very assiduous and active in meeting me and those in the Government talk about this issue. I know he has been working closely with local leaders as well; I was able to meet them in advance of this debate, to understand their position.
4:25 pm
Sitting suspended.
As the 10-year plan sets out, the future of our NHS cannot be delivered just through hospitals. Care needs to be embedded in our communities, so I am delighted that Skimped Hill health centre—or Bracknell Forest centre for health, as I believe it will officially be known—is now in the final build stages. Once completed, the centre will bring together in one place several services in the centre of Bracknell, including two GP practices, maternity services and children’s services, rooting healthcare in the community and breaking down the bureaucratic barriers to access both for patients and for service providers.
A key element of the shift from hospital to community is ensuring that all health spaces are used to their full potential. Brants Bridge in Bracknell spans both Frimley and Berkshire healthcare trusts and offers a range of services, including X-rays, urgent care, dialysis and chemotherapy. However, constituents regularly tell me that they struggle to access the space, or are turned away and directed to A&E for arbitrary reasons. The centre is a resource with huge potential, but I fear we are not utilising it to its fullest. I would therefore welcome a review of the services offered by Brants Bridge, as well as of its accessibility, to better support the Government’s ambitions for community care.
As we build the homes of the future, it is important that we match them with the health infrastructure needed to support them. It is fantastic to see that with the new Skimped Hill health centre and, although it is not in my constituency, I will also mention the new Binfield health and community centre. But Bracknell Forest has a shortage of GPs, with 1,874 patients for every GP, so it is important that we keep developing primary healthcare provision to serve our growing population. We also have a mismatch between pharmacy need and provision, with some areas with the greatest need, such as Bullbrook, relying on just one pharmacy.
I recently met with both Forest Health primary care network and Health Triangle PCN, which includes Ringmead, to discuss patient access, the 10-year plan and the implementation of the new GP contracts. I was pleased to hear thar Ringmead has implemented a new booking system and, although not all patients have felt the benefits of that yet, it has been great to hear from many constituents that it has gone a long way to make accessing their local GP much easier. I stress, however, that we still have a way to go when it comes to ensuring that patients can access the right choice of appointment for their needs. For many, online appointments offer flexibility and convenience, but others want the reassurance of seeing their GP face to face.
In a local authority like Bracknell Forest it is also important to match healthcare provision to where people live, so that people are not forced to travel long distances to access their appointments. I have heard many residents share their frustrations at getting an appointment in Bracknell when they live in Sandhurst, and vice versa. Although I appreciate that that is sometimes unavoidable or about ensuring that healthcare can be accessed as quickly as possible, I would like more local appointments to be prioritised.
The aim in the 10-year plan to end the 8 am appointment rush resonates with many constituents who have, too many times, faced the stress of scrambling for an appointment while unwell and in need of treatment. I am pleased to see the Government delivering on that key ambition, but I am aware that the shift has come with operational challenges for primary healthcare providers when managing patients who book close to closing time. I know that healthcare professionals would welcome the Minister’s thoughts on how the teething issues can be addressed, so that the system works as well as possible for both patients and providers.
The Government’s ambition is rightly to raise the healthiest generation of children ever, and early intervention and community-focused care will play a crucial role in delivering that. As many colleagues know, I often speak about special educational needs and disabilities issues in this House, and with my constituents. SEND is not just an educational issue. Among many other things, it is a social issue, an equalities issue and, of course, a health issue. Across the country, children and adults wait far too long to access attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and autism assessments. The number of children waiting for an autism assessment is acknowledged to be high across all six Berkshire local authorities. In June 2025, there were 682 children aged between five and 18 in Bracknell Forest waiting for an assessment, and a further 241 adults were also waiting.
Berkshire healthcare NHS foundation trust has been overhauling its system to improve waiting times and deliver a better performance, and has recently been recognised as one of the top performing trusts in the country, but it will take time for the efforts of those reforms to be felt on the ground. The long waits involved mean that many are turning to private diagnosis, which risks creating a two-tier system in which those who can afford it receive a diagnosis and the support that follows and those who cannot are left to struggle. I fundamentally believe that young people should not need a diagnosis to access essential support. When parent carers, classroom teachers and the young person themselves can all see that there is need for more support, it should be made available, and the diagnosis can be worried about later.
As the Government develop their reforms to our broken SEND system, I want to see a shift away from a system that too often feels diagnosis-led, and towards one that is genuinely needs-led. Prioritising early intervention will enable quicker support and treatment and will improve young people’s quality of life and outcomes.
I recently hosted a series of roundtables with parent carers and practitioners to hear directly from my constituents what they want to see in a reformed SEND system, and I produced a report on their local concerns and perspectives. Many of those who contributed highlighted a need for joined-up, holistic working across agencies and service providers. Nationally, there is a chronic shortage of trained speech and language therapists and occupational therapists in our schools. That has deep and long-lasting consequences, locking young people out of fully accessing their education and preventing them from reaching their full potential. I urge the Government to recognise the importance of increasing recruitment and retention in those critical roles.
I also heard that it too often felt like health services were walking off the pitch and leaving everything to schools and the local authority. Although I recognise the importance of an education-led approach to reforms, local health services, including integrated health boards, need to be held accountable for the parts of the system they are responsible for.
I was delighted to welcome the SEND Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Queen’s Park and Maida Vale (Georgia Gould), to Bracknell last week to discuss these issues further and to share the voices of the parents, carers, professionals and young people whose experiences informed my report. Again, I thank those who contributed. I am pleased to have the chance to raise the issue in this health debate too.
I recently attended a dementia forum, hosted by Bracknell Forest council, which brought together dementia patients, their families and carers, healthcare professionals and social workers. It was fantastic to hear how a joined-up approach to offering health and social care was having a positive effect on outcomes for those living with dementia and their loved ones. I was also delighted recently to meet our local Admiral nurse, who works with patients experiencing early onset dementia and is supported by Dementia UK. I heard how important it is for the whole team of support around a person with early onset dementia to have access to their health record, enabling a more holistic approach to care. That is a fantastic example of best practice, and it has had a profound impact on patients and their families across Bracknell Forest.
Such community provision is essential if we are to meet our goal of developing a genuinely neighbourhood-led health service. There is much that the voluntary sector can contribute. For example, local mental health services are profoundly stretched, and young people face long waits for support through child and adolescent mental health services. In Bracknell, I am proud that we have excellent local organisations such as Youthline, which was just awarded a King’s award, and Create Hope, which works closely with schools to deliver counselling for young people. I would like them to be supported more by the health system, including through commissioning. Young people across the country face unprecedented challenges, and community organisations play a vital role in advancing a preventive approach to the development of longer-term mental health problems and providing the support on the ground that young people desperately need.
A healthcare system fit for the future must embrace the technological age we live in, and the Government’s ambition to shift the NHS from analogue to digital is commendable. The lack of reliable information-sharing across services is a familiar barrier for both patients and professionals in accessing and delivering the best healthcare, so I am strongly in favour of the Government’s work on the single patient record, which is currently in a test phase. It will play a key role in our 10-year health plan.
The single patient record will lower barriers to access by ensuring that healthcare professionals have a clear, unified view of patient health records, thereby enabling a safer, faster and more co-ordinated approach across services and ensuring that both patients and healthcare providers can access the information they need as seamlessly as possible. That is particularly important in an area like Bracknell, which benefits from services delivered by both the Frimley and the Royal Berkshire NHS trusts—we get the best of both systems.
When patients walk into a health centre, GP clinic or hospital, they do not want to have to think about which ICB or trust is providing the service and whether their data can be shared with the other parts of the health system that they access. They just want to be treated, and to know that every part of the system will understand the treatment they have received. Instead, I often hear residents in Bracknell Forest complaining that their blood test at the local hospital has not been shared with their local GP, or that the care provided by Bracknell Forest council does not speak to the care they access through the NHS. Will the Minister provide an update on the progress towards a single patient record, and set out what it will mean for my constituents in Bracknell who rely on overlapping health systems?
Building a health system fit for today’s needs is a challenge, but one that I know the Government are determined to embrace. I recognise and welcome the progress that has already been made, and I urge the Minister to continue in the spirit of innovation and ambition to drive forward critical changes. We must ensure that flexibility, early intervention and a community-first approach are placed at the heart of our reforms, and that barriers to access are considered carefully so that no community is left behind. I hope the Minister can take these concerns back to the Department to ensure that they are fed into the Government’s plans to rebuild our health system, and that Bracknell Forest’s voice is heard loudly as the ambitious work continues to build an NHS fit for the future.
I am pleased to say that that work is progressing and remains on track against the timeline set out in the new hospital programme plan for implementation, with construction expected to commence between 2028 and 2029. I also assure my hon. Friend, other local Members and the public that we are working closely with the Frimley Park trust on the location of the new hospital. I know that he appreciates that we are currently in a commercially sensitive phase of the process, but the trust expects to be able to provide further updates soon. My hon. Friend’s constituents will also have an interest in the Royal Berkshire hospital, so let me be clear that we remain firmly committed to its delivery in wave 3 of the programme.
My hon. Friend raised special educational needs, and I know from my constituency that this affects Members across the House. I acknowledge the concerns about SEND support in Bracknell Forest, and I welcome the urgent local plans that are in place to address the issue in the region. It is right that my hon. Friend met the SEND Minister. At the national level, the Government are determined to deliver meaningful reform that stands the test of time, rebuilds the confidence of families with lived experience and puts partnerships at the heart of our solutions.
Furthermore, our 10-year health plan sets out the core principle of early intervention and support—including without the need for diagnosis—for children and young people with SEND. We are also accelerating the roll-out of mental health support teams in schools and colleges to reach full national coverage by the end of this Parliament. Going further, the first 50 young futures hubs will bring together services to support children and young people with early access advice and wellbeing intervention.
The Government recognise the pressures on elective care. That is why we are delivering millions of additional appointments and reducing waiting lists up and down the country, and the local picture is promising. I am pleased to report that, since July 2024, Frimley’s acute trust has lowered its referral-to-treatment waiting lists by over 17,000 and more than halved the number of patients waiting for over a year. Local people will welcome that, but there is much more to be done. It is a vital first step in improving those services.
Community health services also play a critical role in reducing pressures across the system; my hon. Friend made that point and paid tribute to the Admiral nurse and the role of Dementia UK in his constituency. We are working closely with NHS England to improve access to community health services, including in Bracknell Forest, helping to deliver our shift from the hospital to the community. That is important work with the voluntary and community sector, and those third sector organisations are crucial to that. We are seeing tangible results. My hon. Friend talked about the multimillion-pound Skimped Hill development in the town centre, opening in February 2026. That will see new community health services, including maternity services and a new GP practice serving the people of Bracknell Forest. It is a real trailblazer for the sorts of thing that we expect in neighbourhood health services, so well done to all those making that happen for local people.
My hon. Friend mentioned pharmacies, which are an absolutely integral part of the community. That is why in 2025 and 2026 we have increased funding for the core community pharmacy contractual framework to more than £3 billion, representing the largest uplift in funding of any part of the NHS at that time.
Improvements to primary care do not stop there. I am pleased to report that we are investing over £1 billion extra into GP services, including in the primary care workforce and funding for infrastructure improvements, ensuring that places such as Bracknell Forest get the resources and GPs they need. The local picture relating to access to GPs is strong, with more than 90% of people in Bracknell seeing a GP within 14 days of requesting an appointment. That figure is reinforced by the positive feedback that practices are receiving from their patients. The opportunity to request appointments online, which has been available since 1 October, is also helping with that 8 am scramble; I was able to take advantage of that myself in my own patch. That online access is a real benefit for local people. If there are any particular local issues—as I know there are—it is the role of the ICB to work with local practices to make sure that those are resolved, which is what local people expect.
As a result of these broad national and local efforts, over 10 million more appointments have been delivered in England this year compared with last year. Dentistry is an issue across all our constituencies and my hon. Friend is right to raise it. We are recruiting more dentists in the areas that need them most to improve the oral health of children and to deliver additional dental appointments in places such as Bracknell Forest, where I am pleased to report that an additional 3,300 appointments have been commissioned across 2025 and 2026. All of that will deliver better dental care for everyone in England, including in my hon. Friend’s constituency.
I welcome and share my hon. Friend’s enthusiasm for the single patient record. A key thing that came out of our consultation on the 10-year plan was the desire of patients not to have continually to repeat their story and the desire of clinicians to be able to see more of the patient’s record. If staff providing care can see a single, accurate and up-to-date record that draws together the key information from different services, wherever that is needed, that will deliver significant benefits not just for my hon. Friend’s constituents, but for everyone in England, not least in the time and effort saved and the greater accuracy and appropriateness of treatment. We are currently building three proofs of concept to test the different technical ways that we might deliver the single patient record and to prove a clear pathway to taking that forward. I am happy to engage with my hon. Friend on that.
I thank my hon. Friend for bringing this debate to Parliament on behalf of his constituents. It is hard to cover everything that affects local people, but I think we have done a pretty good job. I hope that my response shows that the Government are seriously committed to addressing the important issues that he raised on behalf of his constituents. I assure him that we are embracing that challenge. We are determined to deliver innovation, and we have the ambition to make the health service fit for the future. That is the manifesto commitment that he and I were elected on, and that is what the Government are absolutely determined to do. I look forward to working further on making these services better for the people of Bracknell Forest.