WELLINGTON Community Hospital’s inpatient ward will re-open to patients in September.

Somerset Partnership NHS Foundation Trust has confirmed the ward, which closed for repairs in July 2018 and has remained closed since, will re-open after a good spell of recruitment.

The trust has been struggling to recruit nurses to ensure safe staffing levels at the county’s 13 community hospitals.

The fate of inpatient wards at Dene Barton – and Chard – which were temporarily closed in 2017, remains unclear. Staffing levels have been a constant factor at all three hospitals.

Phil Brice, the trust’s director of governance and corporate development, told members of Somerset County Council’s adults and health scrutiny committee at a meeting last week that addressing closures had been ‘a slow process’.

It had been a continuing struggle to recruit and retain staff in the hospitals’ predominantly rural locations.

He said: “It’s still really difficult. It has improved – in Wellington we have had six new starters and we do plan to re-open the ward at Wellington in September. Recruitment is improving but it is difficult to recruit into community hospitals. Somerset suffers from not having its own university, so we rely on Bristol, Plymouth and elsewhere. It’s not the most attractive place for young nurses starting their career.”

Wellington councillor Andrew Govier said he was ‘delighted’ about Wellington hospital but said the long-term future of community hospitals needed to be laid out.

He said: “It does feel the community hospital, like a lot of the NHS, is quite fragile – there’s not much resilience there. People don’t want to start working in a hospital in Wellington when they live locally and then be told they’re being moved to a hospital in Minehead.”

Dene Barton community hospital has seen increased outpatient use since September 2018, when physiotherapy services were transferred there from Musgrove Park Hospital – an arrangement which Mr Brice said was ‘working well’ and would remain in place until March 2020.

He said a decision on the potential to re-open Dene Barton’s and Chard’s inpatient wards would be taken in the autumn, as part of planning for the winter months.

If Somerset has a bad winter, beds at community hospitals may be moved to other locations to relieve pressure on the county’s acute hospitals and their A&E departments.

Mr Brice said: “There will be a more detailed review in September when we look at the winter position.”

Stephen Chandler, the council’s director of adult services, said his department was working with the NHS to see how community hospitals could best be utilised in the future, in light of growing life expectancy and a drive towards providing more care in people’s homes.

He said: “We know that you can’t look at beds in isolation. I think we need to have much more of a conversation about what we’re doing outside of the community hospital bed and in the community.

“I’m really worried about the resilience of our community services. You can’t operate a reduced community bed stock without resilience in community services.

“The future needs to see community hospital beds alongside a community offer.”

DANIEL MUMBY

Local democracy reporter