8/7/05 New entrants to the UK: We have been receiving more queries about whether practices can register patients to whom we've sent letters asking them to register with a GP. These letters are triggered by a notification from port health; and port health only tell us of people whom the immigration officers have decided meet criteria which include those necessary for being eligible for NHS treatment - i.e. the immigration authorities have already decided that the person is eligible for NHS treatment. The local Primary Care Agency, however, has sent a bulletin to surgeries warning them about fraudulent applications. A practice has recently sent me a flowchart which seems to be based on a misinterpretation of the PCA bulletin, and which is excessively exclusive - i.e. it tells practices they must not register people who are eligible for NHS treatment, and who should be registering with a GP and receive screening for tuberculosis. I have discussed this with the PCA.
In the mean time, if new entrants arrive at practices with a letter from the HPU saying they should register with a GP, practices can assume that they are eligible for NHS treatment, and there is no bar to their being registered with the practice. If they want confirmation that the letter is from us, and not a forgery, they can call us, and we will be able to confirm whether the letter is genuine. Surrey HPU has put together a document on eligibility for treatment, which has been agreed by the PCTs in Surrey, and by the PCA. It can be downloaded here (or via our Policy and guidance documents section).
Please subscribe to our announcements email group to be sure of receiving updates (e.g. change of address...). This is not a busy email list - you will receive very few messages via this group.
PLEASE NOTE that this site has run out of web space
.
We hope, soon, to move it to another server, with more space. In
the mean time, some of the links might not work.
SHPU - formerly the Surrey Communicable Disease Control Service (SCDCS) - was established in 1997, when the two health authorities in Surrey merged their communicable disease control functions, to create a single service for all of Surrey.
Since 1 April 2003, when a new national Health Protection Agency came into existence, Surrey Health Protection Unit (SHPU) has been an outpost of this agency.
In September 2003 it was confirmed that SHPU would merge with the Sussex Health Protection Unit, to become co-terminous with the Surrey and Sussex Strategic Health Authority. For the time-being this web site will continue to refer only to the Surrey part of the Surrey and Sussex Health Protection Unit.
These are the web sites of the West Surrey and East Surrey health communities.
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PLEASE NOTE: even if you select the "search this web site" button above, the results of the search will include "sponsored links", over which we have no control. Surrey and Sussex HPU only endorses pages in the fam-english.demon.co.uk domain. The appearance of any other site in the search results does NOT indicate that Surrey and Sussex HPU in any way endorses the site.
For the time being this site will continue to refer only to the area covered from the Leatherhead office of the Health Protection Unit, although the Surrey and Sussex units have now merged.
| How we fit in the Health Protection Agency |
| Lead Areas |
| SHPU Announce email list and web site |
| People. |
| Office addresses and phone numbers. |
| A note about email. |
| Secure communication |
If you want to be sure that an email will reach us quickly, please send it to ccdc@shpu.nhs.uk - emails to that address are forwarded to all of us.
The Surrey office is part of the Surrey and Sussex Health Protection Unit (SSHPU). This is currently based on three sites: in Chichester, Lewes, and here in Leatherhead. The SSHPU director is Dr Angela Iversen, based at Lewes.
The SSHPU is part of the HPA Local and Regional Services Division's South East Region. The regional director is Dr Graham Bickler.
We have divided up the work so that for some issues we have a lead person, who leads on the proactive work on that issue. We have also divided up the patch geographically and by organisation. Click here for details. (With all the current changes as the HPA is established, and we work out how best to share the work across the larger Surrey and Sussex area, these arrangements are likely to be subject to review and considerable change for the foreseeable future; but we will endeavour to keep this website up to date with the current arrangements .)
People wishing to receive occasional updates about SHPU, and to be able to download our policy and guidance documents , and other items of interest earlier than can be done via this web site, may wish to subscribe to a Yahoo! group called SCDCS-announce. This is set up as a newsletter group, not a discussion group, so it will not mean receiving many email messages.
Click here to join this list, or enter your email address in the box below. (Details on how to manage Yahoo! group membership are provided at www.phmeg.org.uk/egroup.htm.)
(With all the current changes as the HPA is established, and the Surrey and Sussex HPUs merge, these arrangements are likely to be subject to review and considerable change for the foreseeable future; but we will endeavour to keep this website up to date with the current arrangements .)
We have two consultants (one post vacant) in communicable disease control (CsCDC), one health protection specialist practitioner, and support staff. We hope to employ some TB nurses.
We have divided up the work so that for some issues we have a lead person, who leads on the proactive work on that issue. We have also divided up the patch geographically and by organisation. Click here for details.
Consultants in Communicable Disease Control include:
| Name | Contact details* | Notes |
| Dr Peter M B English | Peter.English@shpu.nhs.uk,
or
which should work permanently.
or via world-wide-web, for Dr English in person. |
Personal web page Work PGP key Home PGP key ccdc@shpu.nhs.uk (or  ) will reach all
HPU staff. |
| Dr Corry van den Bosch | Corry.vandenBosch@shpu.nhs.uk | |
| Dr Margot Nicholls | Margot.Nicholls@shpu.nhs.uk | |
| Dr Kevin Carroll | Kevin.Carroll@shpu.nhs.uk | (Locum, covering NE part of West Sussex from Leatherhead office) |
Our establishment for Surrey has been reduced to one I-grade, one H-grade, and 0.6 wte F-grade infection control /health protection nurses; plus an additional 1 wte nurse for the West Sussex part of the patch. At present we have one nurse in post. We have had approval to recruit to the H grade post - see the advert at the HPA web site - but the other posts have been caught by the recruitment freeze consequent on the £14.5 million that HPA is required to make as a result of the Arms Length Body Review. In the mean time we have some agency ICN support from Infection Control Solutions:
| Name | Notes | |
| Jaime Morgan | Jaime.Morgan@shpu.nhs.uk | Covering Surrey and providing support to NE part of West Sussex from Leatherhead site |
| Diana Morrison | Infection.Control@shpu.nhs.uk | Agency ICN support from Infection Control Solutions: Hotdesking at Leatherhead. (Together providing 0.4wte) |
| Martin Peache |
According to BTS guidelines there should be up to 2.5 wte TB specialist nurses in Surrey, but the HPU does not employ any TB nurses in Surrey. The draft TB national plan states that TB control is NOT to be done by the Health Protection Agency, but by (or commissioned by) Primacy Care Trusts, so it seems extremely unlikely that the HPU will be able to employ any TB nurses, unless we do so under an extra Memorandum of Understanding, with the PCTs commissioning the service from the HPA.
| Name | Job description | Contact details |
| Mrs Angie Samways | PA |
 |
| Charlotte Collyer | Secretary | Charlotte.Collyer@shpu.nhs.uk |
| Post vacant | Secretary | |
| Mr Nigel Bainton | Information officer | Nigel.Bainton@shpu.nhs.uk |
| Century House, Leatherhead (How to get to Century House) | ||||
| Other offices:
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| Out of hours contact number | ||||
| Former addresses |
The Surrey office of the Surrey and Sussex Health Protection Unit is currently based in Leatherhead, in Surrey. Our address is:
Surrey & Sussex Health Protection Unit Century House 26 Bridge Street Leatherhead Surrey KT22 8BZ Tel 01372 869625, fax 01372 869884.We can also be contacted on the following numbers:
Tel 0706 995 0467, fax 0706 995 0467.It is possible that we will move again in 2005. The 0706... numbers will continue to be be redirected to our real, current telephone number, and the fax number will continue to send us a fax by email.
(This is mainly for professional use.)
Out of hours call 0870 238 5156, and say where you live (or where the incident you are enquiring about is).
At present we have a number of different types of email address.
As the Health Protection Agency gears up, we expect it to set up forwarder email addresses (firstname.surname@hpa.org.uk), and we will post information about that on this site and via our announcements email list in due course.
The fax machines at the numbers given above are in our own offices, not shared with anybody else. The 0706 xxx xxxx3 numbers cost more to use (mobile phone rates), but faxes sent to those numbers will be delivered as email attachments, rather than printing out at a fax machine.
The most secure way to communicate with us will be by using encrypted email. This used to be possible when emailing the East Surrey (West Park) office, using "Pretty Good Privacy", software which is free for non-commercial use, and can be downloaded from the PGP International web site. Encryption has not yet been installed at our new offices in Leatherhead. We will let you know via our announcements email list when this has been done, and we will make it possible to download public keys from this site, although you should always validate them before using them.
For more information visit the Department of Health's information security web site, or PGP International.
At present this web site's URL is http://fam-english.demon.co.uk/SCDCS.htm. It is located on (Dr English's) own web site. We hope to move it to an "official" health sector web site, or to get it a site of its own, eventually. It should always be possible to find it at http://bigfoot.com/~scdcs, wherever it is actually based.
| Information posted by SHPU |
| Other links |
SHPU is not responsible for the content of any of the web pages or web sites below.
