This year, Haringey will receive a £7.6 million funding increase for local health services such as hospitals and walk-in centres.
The above inflation increase for Haringey was announced by NHS England in December, after the funding formula used to allocate money was reviewed. The new formula ‘will more accurately reflect population changes and include a specific deprivation measure.’
The announcement follows a campaign for fairer health funding by Lynne Featherstone MP, the Haringey Liberal Democrats and local residents.
During the campaign, the Liberal Democrat MP contacted both the Department of Health and NHS England, demanding a fairer deal for Haringey health services – which have been historically underfunded.
Alongside welcoming the increase, the MP for Hornsey and Wood Green has vowed to continue the campaign to secure further funding for local services.
Lynne Featherstone MP commented:
“Haringey health services have been underfunded for decades, unfairly receiving less money per person than neighbouring boroughs.
“I am so pleased that the Government has changed the funding formula, giving Haringey health services a much needed funding boost. Thank you to all the local residents who got involved in the campaign for more funding, and helped add pressure for change.
“We don’t yet have truly fair funding, though, and I will continue to push for even more money for our local services.”
Lynne Featherstone 
What is happening in the saga of setting up main health centres as was intended for the new centre in Park Road? I needed to change GP and went to the new combined practice several years ago. At that time my first appointment was on a Saturday, and then a couple of doctors were on duty to see patients who had difficulty with weekdays, but more importantly one GP was there to see ‘urgent’ and ’emergency’ cases, as an alternative to traipsing over to the Whittington, and waiting several hours in A&E, quite common if after triage, you were not deeemed an urgent case.
Could you please establish why this funding was withdrawn, what are the additional costs of not running the service at weekends, i.e. a reasoned estimate of the relative cost of treating a patient at Park Road or at A&E, and finally if and when funding is to be reinstated so this expensive facility can be fully utilised.
I am a member of the Patient’s Forum at Park Road, and have discussed these issues with some of the Senior Partners. One, Dr David Masters, is a member of the GP Commissioning Group, and it takes up ‘quite a bit’ of his time.
This is a very important issue, and the state of the Health Service locally and nationally is something on which all MPs will be judged, and you and the Coalition need to be seen to deliver.
Regards RP
Hi Richard – I am happy to raise this with health ministers on your behalf. I agree we need to do more to ease the burden on A&Es and prevent non-urgent cases clogging up the system. Better access to GPs/walk-in centres at evenings and weekends could well be part of the solution. I’ll be in touch via email.
Thanks for pursuing this matter and writing to the Minister, Jeremy Hunt. This is an issue where we need to ensure the £7.6m is spent carefully and wisely.
We need to continue to improve services at doctor’s surgeries. The team at Hornsey Park Road, the combined Queenswood practice are very good, but they have had to cut staff, and have no resources for the Saturday or Sunday Surgery. Even if it were only from 9am to 3pm initially this would be a start. However the disbenefit of privatising the Out of Hours Doctor Service to Harmoni from Camidoc, was that Camidoc used Park Road at the weekend, so there was a Practice Doctor, for Queenswood patients, and a Camidoc Doctor for the others. This seemed a very sensible setup to me, but when Health service private contracts are concerned practical common sense goes out of the window
I look forward to the Minister’s reply, as next year the state of the NHS is one thing the thinking Guardian readers of Hornsey will be judging MPs performances on.