FOLLOWING a crunch meeting with hospital bosses the leader of Redditch Council has welcomed plans for improvement.

Councillor Bill Hartnett recently met with Michelle McKay, chief executive of Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust and Simon Trickett, for NHS Redditch and Bromsgrove Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG).

Also present was Redditch Council's deputy chief executive Sue Hanley and a representative for Redditch MP Rachel Maclean.

The meeting, at the Worcestershire Royal Hospital, was called for by cllr Hartnett after a damning Care Quality Commission (CQC) report into the trust, which runs Redditch's Alexandra Hospital.

Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust was warned to get its house in order in December 2015 when it was placed in 'special measures'.

But an inspection by the CQC in April, the findings of which were recently published, suggests little has changed for the better and that patients are still getting 'poor care'.

The trust will continue to be rated 'inadequate' by the independent health and social care regulator.

One of the items discussed at the meeting was the trust's nine-point improvement plan which cllr Hartnett said he welcomed.

“I’m encouraged by the response of the chief executive, and by what we heard in the meeting," he said.

"We met for an hour and they went through the trust’s nine-point improvement plan, and while clearly things don’t change overnight and it will be a lengthy process, they showed us some evidence of improvement since April.

"They’re expecting a re-inspection soon and we hope to see that their work has had an effect in the right direction.

“We have agreed to meet again in October and I want to make sure we keep working together like this."

Cllr Hartnett added: “Indeed I would like to see the CCG and the trust work more pro-actively with Redditch Borough Council to help improve the quality of people's lives, and to keep the communication between everyone going so that the people in Redditch know what’s going on.”

“We may have disagreed over the plan for Redditch’s hospital services but we all want to work together to serve and represent our community.”