HEREFORDSHIRE councillors will ask hospital bosses to explain what plans they have to cope with the increase in demand from thousands of extra houses planned for the county.

The council has a target of 16,500 extra homes to be built in the county before 2031. And with many new homes already being built councillors told the adult and wellbeing scrutiny committee that they feared the health service would not cope with the extra demand.

Retired nurse and committee chairman Polly Andrews said: “It’s not just future housing, everywhere you drive at the moment there is new housing going up and I understand there is a substantial amount being bought by people retiring in this county.

“We’ve got a new university coming and they hope to attract 5,000 students in a few years’ time and students have their own specific health needs and requirements.

Councillor Carole Gandy agreed and was concerned the Herefordshire and Worcestershire sustainable and transformation partnership has not given much thought to the increase in population.

She said: “There doesn’t seem to be any real recognition of planning going forward for the huge increase in population we will be seeing across Herefordshire and Worcestershire.

“There still doesn’t seem to be a plan in place to deal with the enormous increase in population there.”

Councillor Andrews said NHS Herefordshire Clinical Commissioning Group and Wye Valley NHS Trust needed to be asked what their future plans are for this expansion of population.

She said: “The GPs have a five year plan in place which seems to involve using other practitioners like physician associates or nurse practitioners. “Which begs the question, where are we going to get the nurse practitioners from and the fact that the government has decided student nurses should pay for their training?”

The committee agreed to ask both health organisations to attend a meeting on January 29, 2018. Hazel Braund, Herefordshire CCG operations director, said they were working with local partners and developing a co-ordinated response to future housing developments.

She said: “This includes ongoing meetings with the University to understand how we can support the future health needs of its students. “We have been linking closely with the council’s planning team to ensure that for any new housing developments, where appropriate, resources are sought from developers to support health infrastructure.”