Tom Gordon, Liberal Democrat MP for Harrogate and Knaresborough, has written to the Leader of North Yorkshire Council warning that removal of Warden Responder service Lifeline will push demand onto ambulance, police and fire services.
Tom, alongside 10 Lib Dem Councillors have called for changes to the county’s Lifeline service to be paused until residents have been consulted and the impact on them assessed.
Lifeline is the Council’s 24/7 monitored alarm service for elderly, disabled and vulnerable residents. Under the approved changes, the Warden Responder service, where council staff attend a resident’s home after an alarm is raised, is to be withdrawn, and routine contact for users in Richmondshire, Harrogate and Selby is to fall from monthly or quarterly visits to a single annual check. Fees are to be unified across the county.
The changes were agreed without consulting the people who rely on the service, without a published equality or health impact assessment, and without formal consultation with the emergency services left to pick up the demand. Incidents currently resolved by a warden at the door, many of which need no ambulance, police officer or fire crew, will become 999 calls.
They also challenge the presentation of the changes as a move towards equality across North Yorkshire, noting that consistency is being achieved by reducing provision where it exists rather than extending it to Scarborough, Craven and Hambleton, which have no Lifeline service at all. The decision itself was taken without a public consultation or a vote of full Council, and a subsequent call-in was defeated by seven votes to six after a councillor who had signed the call-in request was advised he could not take part.
The letter asks the Council to pause implementation, consult users, families and carers, publish equality and health impact assessments, consult formally with Yorkshire Ambulance Service, North Yorkshire Police, North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service and the Integrated Care Board, and set out how a Lifeline offer will be extended to the parts of the county that have none. Mr Gordon has also asked to meet the Leader, Executive Members and service directors as soon as possible, and for the letter to be circulated to all North Yorkshire MPs.
Tom said:
Lifeline is not a gadget on the wall. For a lot of my constituents, it is the reason they can carry on living in their own home. Taking away the responder service and cutting contact to once a year is a significant change to people’s lives, and those people were never asked.
When we were forced into this new single North Yorkshire Council we were promised a consistent standard across North Yorkshire. Residents warned at the time that this harmonisation would turn out to be code for levelling down to the cheapest option available. On Lifeline, that fear has been proved right.
Councillor Peter Lacey, Leader of the Liberal Democrat and Liberal Group on North Yorkshire Council, said:
This decision was taken without asking a single one of the people who depend on the service, and when we called it in, the referral to full Council was lost by one vote in circumstances that leave real doubt over whether that vote was sound. The least the Council can do is pause, publish the impact assessment, and let people have their say before the responders are taken away.
