Health bosses have been accused of wasting councillors’ time after failing to answer questions posed to them over NHS contracts they wanted renewing.

Exasperated councillors even threatened to end the meeting after the Kent and Medway Integrated Care Board (ICB), the body tasked with managing the local NHS budget and purchasing healthcare services, failed to adequately respond.

Members were considering the reprocurement of contracts in relation to adult services and children’s services which are outside of hospitals for Medway and Swale.

Services included in community care include diabetes, cardiology, and stroke services, as well as epilepsy and speech and language services, among others.

Cllr Dan McDonald (Lab), chair of Medway Council’s health and adult social care committee (HASC), accused representatives of wasting their time during the meeting on October 15.

He said: “We can’t operate and comply if your response is ‘I can’t tell you what’s going to happen’.

“It isn’t good enough for the ICB to sit here and say you don’t know what changes are coming and you don’t know what the implications will be until we get there.

Councillors had asked about how continuity of service would be ensured during a change of provider and how the ICB was managing the large number of unfilled vacancies.

However, when asked about what would change to meet some of the targets the board had set for improving the service, representatives said they did not know.

They said plans for contracts would be developed after the committee had given permission for reprocurement.

But councillors did not think this was acceptable, and didn’t believe the ICB wouldn’t have some idea of what would change to improve the service.

Cllr McDonald added: “It’s pointless us going on this evening because you’ve got members here asking full questions about the implications and scope of this contract, a contract you fully scoped out, and you know the implications of this plan.

“Yet we’re getting that same pushback again saying ‘We don’t know what’s going to happen’, ‘we’ll have to see what happens’ - it’s not good enough.

It’s pointless us going on this evening…

“It’s not good enough for an organisation to run in that way. We’re here talking about a really important procurement programme here.

“If I get another response to a member that you can’t answer we might as well stop the meeting now because it’s pointless going on.”

Cllr David Wildey (Con) said: “You must know what you want every service provider to provide. Those details should be here.

“It may be very difficult to get to some of the targets you want to, but that’s a discussion we should be having.”

But Kate Langford, chief medical officer and acting CEO of the ICB, said the services would be reprocured as they currently are and then longer term changes would be worked out during negotiations between the ICB, providers, and the council.

She explained: “I’m not saying we don’t know where we’re going, we’re going to reprocure the services as-is and we are committed to improving them over the lifetime of the contract.

“At the point at which we let the contracts we will be expecting to get the same services as are in place today.

“We’ve shared with you our ambitions document, which gives some idea of the types of things we will want to see but we do not have specific plans developed at the moment because that will have to take place with the provider once we have re-let the contract.

“Then we will work with that provider and communities and we will come to you and say which areas we’d like to improve, let’s co-develop those improvements together. But I don’t know the specifics of what those improvements will be.”

In January this year Medway Council made the decision that the reprocurement was a substantial variation on previous schemes for adult care and reaffirmed this in August in relation to children’s care.

But the committee continued with the process, which requires the ICB to consult with the public and provide more information to stakeholders.

Councillors decided not to vote on the report presented by the ICB.

Instead it voted to take the matter to further discussion between councillors, the ICB and officers - as well as giving the NHS representatives a series of questions to answer.