CCG publishes tender documents after legal threat from campaigners

A clinical commissioning group in the East of England has agreed to publish tender documents after receiving a letter before action from campaign group Stop the NHS Sell Off.

Law firm Leigh Day, which acted for the campaigners, claimed in the letter that Cambridgeshire and Peterborough CCG had acted unlawfully.

It argued that the clinical commissioning group had prevented “proper patient involvement” by refusing to make the documents available to the public. This had put the CCG in breach of its legal obligations under the Health and Social Care Act 2012 to engage with the public, Leigh Day claimed.

The letter before action identified four areas where it was suggested that the CCG had failed to meet its obligations:

• It had breached its duty to have a patient involvement policy;
• It had breached its duty to have a procurement strategy;
• Its constitution did not fully reflect the extent of its requirements around engagement; and
• It had not taken into account NHS England’s transforming participation in healthcare guidance.

The law firm wrote: “It appears to our clients that the CPCCG is only prepared to engage with patients at a very high level of generality… By the time details of the proposals are made available to patients and the public it may be too late for patients to influence decisions which have already been taken.”

The CCG has agreed to publish the documents but has denied acting unlawfully.

Rosa Curling from law firm Leigh Day said: “We realised that as soon as companies dropped out of the process key decisions were already being taken by CPCCG and communicated to potential providers. However, the public remained in the dark as to what is proposed for the service they pay for.

“Commercial interests must not take precedence over transparency so that the public, the users and funders of the NHS service, know exactly what is being proposed for that service.”