MSPs Fergus Ewing and Edward Mountain that suggest the Home Office plan may fall foul of planning law<\/a> in Scotland.<\/p>\nThe costing proposal details the huge costs of healthcare services for the site, it includes:<\/p>\n
\u2022 \u00a3629,298 to fund the workforce needed for the site<\/p>\n
\u2022 \u00a3269,899 for on on-site vaccination clinics staffed by two members of staff for two days a week, offering jabs against diseases including diphtheria, tetanus and polio<\/p>\n
\u2022 \u00a3115,740 will be required for extra capacity for translation services<\/p>\n
\u2022 \u00a387,067 for mental health services with dedicated \u201cdistress brief intervention\u201d support for on-site residents 365 days a year<\/p>\n
\u2022 \u00a325,665 for monthly sexual health clinics offering blood-borne virus screening at weekends with \u201ccondoms available on-site\u201d<\/p>\n
The proposal states: \u201cNHS Highland acute health system is under considerable strain. It is therefore imperative we develop a Core Site Team to ensure people are signposted to the appropriate service avoiding A&E wherever possible\u201d.<\/p>\n
The report proposes that the core team is made up of two nurses and an admin assistant and a social worker to address \u201csupport and protection issues\u201d.<\/p>\n
A UK Government spokesman said: \u201cWe work closely with health partners to minimise the impact on the local community, GP practices and existing NHS resources.\u201d<\/p>\n
An NHS Highland spokeswoman said: \u201cNHS Highland can confirm that we have established an Operational Group to undertake a detailed review of our costing proposal for the Home Office.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will continue to work closely with the Scottish Government, Scottish Refugee Council, Home Office, Highland Council, and other key partners to ensure that high-quality, coordinated core services are delivered in a sustainable way.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur priority remains meeting the needs of people seeking asylum and delivering high-quality support and services across all core services.\u201d<\/p>\n
Conservative Highland MSP Edward Mountain has warned for months about the impact on the NHS from housing asylum seekers at the barracks.<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cThis extra pressure on a cash-strapped rural health board would be intolerable. What\u2019s more, there is a hidden burden on GPs. There is just no way practices in and around Inverness can absorb this additional load.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo make matters worse, the Home Office don\u2019t appear to have made any attempt to consult the GPs who are expected to carry out so much additional work.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo-one expects such a movement of people to come at no cost, but I really cannot see why taxpayers need to spend thousands on sexual health provision.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople are already angry at this plan, and ridiculous add-ons like that will only make the situation worse. The overall eye-watering cost underlines yet again how inappropriate and unsustainable this whole idea is.\u201d<\/p>\n
Do you want to respond to this article? If so, click here<\/a> to submit your thoughts and they may be published in print. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cameron Barracks, Inverness. The Home Office plan to house up to 300 single male asylum seekers at Cameron…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":445270,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[102,2960,16338,913,19490,229,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-445269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-highland-council","tag-latest-news","tag-nairnshire","tag-politics","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=445269"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445269\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/445270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=445269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=445269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=445269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}