MANY residents failed to make their voices heard in a public consultation on the shake-up of health services in Dorset because they gave up filling in the ‘full of waffle’ questionnaire, according to a health watchdog.

Healthwatch Dorset has criticised Dorset CCG on its Clinical Services Review public consultation in a damning 12-page report highlighting the importance of involving the general public so lessons are learned in future.

They said service planning must be based on the reality of people’s lives, their personal insights and experiences – not just on clinical data or the ‘demands of balancing the books.’

Manager Martyn Webster said: “Before the consultation began, we told Dorset CCG that it needed to present its proposals in plain, jargon-free language that could be understood by members of the general public. We also pointed out that shorter documents are much more likely to be read than longer ones.

“As it turned out, the official consultation document ran to 48 pages. The great majority of people who spoke to us about it said it was too long, full of jargon and ‘waffle’, and that the questionnaire was difficult to fill in. In fact, many people told us they’d started to fill in the questionnaire but had given up part of the way through.

“The CCG put a lot of effort into encouraging local people to take part in the consultation, but at the end of the day that effort is wasted if the consultation isn’t in a language the general public understands.

“So if we were marking the CCG’s report card, we’d probably put something like ‘shows promise – but could do a lot better.’”

In its critical response to Dorset CCG's public consultation over preferred plans to make Royal Bournemouth Hospital the county’s major emergency centre with Poole Hospital for planned care, the watchdog lists out public feedback.

Residents felt the drop-in events were ‘stifling public debate’ with some saying this ‘only added to the impression that the consultation process was being too tightly ‘managed’ by the CCG’.

The watchdog pointed out petitions and signatures indicate ‘the depth of concern many members of the general public feel’ but they were organised and collected by local people, not the CCG its resources.

Major public concerns include travel times to access treatment, scepticism integrated community services and hubs will have the resources or capacity to be able to provide high-quality care outside acute hospitals as well as the future of community hospitals.

The statement reads: “A question people often asked us before the consultation began was ‘what could I say that would actually make a difference?’

“This was a question that we discussed on a number of occasions with the CCG. But we never felt that there was an answer.

“We recommend that before the start of any future consultation, more is done to spell out to what extent, and how, the public can in reality influence particular decisions.”

Responses to the public consultation on the CSR are now with Opinion Research Services (ORS) preparing a report for the CCG's Governing Body ahead of its decision.