A TEAM of community health workers tasked with helping people on housing estates to live longer have been told they do not offer value for money.

Health Trainers were introduced by NHS Oxfordshire five years ago to prevent premature deaths in adults living in Blackbird Leys, Rose Hill, Littlemore and Barton in Oxford and Neithrop, Grimsbury and Ruscote in Banbury.

Statistics show men living on the estates on average die seven earlier than those a few miles away in affluent areas, while women’s life expectancy was cut by six years.

But the team has been told they are no longer needed.

Mark Ladbrooke, Unison trade union convenor for NHS Oxfordshire, said: “This workforce has been largely recruited from these communities.

“They have been trained and skilled up for this work – now they face the dole and they, their friends and neighbours continue to live under the threat of premature death.”

The aim of the task force was to encourage people to lose weight, give up smoking and start exercising.

The trainers would help on shopping trips to pick healthy food, join them at the gym and coach them with anti-smoking advice and tips.

But health authority NHS Oxfordshire said the scheme – which cost £1m over the past three years – was not working and wants to scrap it.

It would leave 11 current workers out of work.

In a report shown to the Oxfordshire Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee (HOSC) yesterday, the trust said that of 260 people picked up by the service each year, only 36 of them fully achieved their health objective.

It labelled the scheme “extraordinarily expensive and exceptionally poor value for money”.

Yesterday, the trainers join-ed health union representatives at County Hall to call for a full public consultation on the plans to cease the service in under a month.

Health trainer Samantha Curran, who works in Rose Hill , added: “I think it is a vital service to keep.

“We are, as far as I’m aware, the only team in Oxfordshire giving this sort of one-to-one service and encouragement to clients in deprived areas and we feel it worked very well.”

A spokesman for NHS Oxfordshire said the project had been an experiment to try to improve the health of hard-to-reach individuals in Oxford and Banbury.

A spokesman added: “The service employs residents from local communities to contact individuals to signpost them to services and, if possible, to work with them to set a personal plan for health improvement, usually around weight loss, exercising or smoking and support them as they put the plan into action.

“A recent evaluation of the service showed it was not providing good value for money and as such the PCT is proposing to close the service.”

A decision on whether to disband the team will be taken by NHS Oxfordshire over the coming few weeks.