A BATTLE over ‘secrecy’ around an NHS shake-up in Oxfordshire is going to the highest authority.

The county’s health watchdog, Healthwatch Oxfordshire, has taken its fight to the UK Information Commissioner.

Healthwatch has lodged a formal challenge after county health bosses refused to release a draft document of the ‘Sustainability and Transformation Plan for Bucks, Oxfordshire and Berkshire West’.

This plan will attempt to ‘streamline’ health services in the three counties and avoid a projected deficit of £587m by 2020.

Healthwatch submitted a Freedom of Information request to get details of the plan to Oxfordshire Clinical Commissioning Group last year but the group refused the request.

The draft plan has now been published, but Healthwatch has lodged its appeal against the refusal on a matter of principle over what is calls ‘NHS secrecy’.

Chairman Eddie Duller OBE warned: “If this decision is upheld, it gives the NHS the right to invent all kinds of committees or sub-committees that are not in themselves statutory bodies and continue to work in secret.”

The clinical commissioning group said it strongly refuted suggestions of secrecy.

It said: “As soon as the draft plan was ready and had been agreed by NHS England it was published and made available in December for everyone to read, together with the summary document.”