YOUR headlines in the Redditch Standard moving trauma patients from the Alex to Worcester and in fact centralising many services including pathology, maternity, stroke has been the core belief of this Trust for years culminating in their Acute Service Review of July 2017.
Consequently it is not surprising few people knew of the changes sprung to be upon us within 24 hours, let alone where to attend. Hopefully Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust mismanagement has now reached its nemesis.
Prolonged waiting times at Worcestershire Royal Hospital, delayed admissions for many hours, have infuriated paramedics and the ambulance service.
The Trust has only one solution, more centralisation of A&E services at Worcestershire Royal Hospital and in consequence its recent planning application for a new ‘A&E Village’ on the Worcestershire Royal site having a budget is £15million.
Unfortunately land set aside set to allow 100 per cent expansion of the Alex. has been recklessly sold off to the highest bidder by the Trust.
I suggest this sum, together with a further £15m already secured by local MPs, would better serve a campaign to train, recruit and employ what is needed – more A&E medical staff and not for more money to be spent on even more bricks and mortar at Worcestershire Royal Hospital.
Restore full A&E services at the Alexandra Hospital and provide full A&E services at Kidderminster Hospital locally where services are needed and meet the A&E demand proportionally across all three hospitals, reduce pressure on the West Midland Ambulance Service and improve conditions for the exhausted ambulance crews.
It would stop ambulances tearing across the county, saving both fuel and energy and reverse these endless critical CQC reports – maternity ‘In need of Improvement’ and ‘inadequate’ A&E services in Worcestershire.
Hospital services could be reintroduced to match those of many other NHS Trusts in England.
How else can this this fiasco be resolved?
E Rochester, Greenlands
SATURDAY, November 20 and Redditch came alive
At the food festival, great show
Opening act Yasmeen – amazing voice
On for a short time we could have heard songs like love on the brain
And ‘I’m Only Three’.
The Violettes as ever a polished performance
Amazing harmony.
They need a big stage/sound to show how good they are.
Would have liked to have heard their version of En Vogue’s Don’t Let Go.
Well done Redditch
Ray, Redditch
HAVING read with interest the changes to the Redditch Borough Council ruling executive committee (Redditch Standard) you cannot but ask ‘are we getting value for money’?
One of the tasks that the new portfolio holder for finance, Councillor Mike Rouse, may wish to look at is the cash that’s spent on Executive members without a job.
Following the elections last May, the Conservatives removed opposition members from the ruling executive.
Prior to May 2021, the official opposition was allocated two seats on exec, an allocation that existed at least over the last two administrations.
This arrangement allowed the opposition to scrutinise decisions at the highest level of the Council.
Under the arrangements introduced by Leader Coun Matt Dormer this year, rather than make savings by reducing the number of executive members he decided to appoint two Conservatives to the body without portfolio.
The two ‘non-job’ appointees were Couns Peter Fleming and Gemma Monaco.
Coun Monaco is probably the first Deputy Leader not to have a responsibility for a department but potentially gets to earn additional responsibility allowances of some £12,202 per annum.
Coun Fleming, potentially gets to trouser an additional £4,437 over his basic councillor allowance for no responsibility.
I wonder how much the Voluntary Community groups could benefit from the £16,639 potentially paid to these councillors who are getting extra responsibility allowances for having no responsibilities?
P Berry, Batchley
RESIDENTS of Moorcroft Gardens have inadvertently been doing their bit for climate change regarding a street light, No11667, which has now been out of action for an incredible 12 months.
Having contacted the Worcestershire hub on numerous occasions explaining that the light in question is on a public footpath, in an era when women’s safety is in the spotlight, is unsafe and the path in complete darkness.
Let’s just hope that someone in authority at the council will read this and take the appropriate action to resolve it!
P Jones, Redditch
IN the summer holidays, work was done to resurface part of the pavement in Tennyson Road.
This was well done, the only problem being that the yellow lines were partially obliterated.
I would have thought that knowing the work was to be done and when, the county council would have put the replacement of the lines in place as a matter of urgency.
As it it without them there is utter chaos at school arrival and leaving times to the extent that it is surprising there has been no accident.
I am told that the job is ‘on the waiting list’.
Does the council not do joined up thinking – that if the lines are obscured by work the council has authorised, then they will need to be replaced immediately and that should have been put in place before the resurfacing work started, or is that too much to ask?
M Morley, Headless Cross
BY way of this letter I am informing the residents of Redditch South and Headless Cross and Oakenshaw that I have resigned from the Conservative Party.
Having served as a Redditch Borough Councillor for nine years and as a Worcestershire County Councillor for four years I feel I can no longer support a party that seems to have a total disregard for the voters who put them into government.
I was dismayed by the way my suspension was handled by the party back in 2019 whwn I was Mayor of Redditch for sharing posts on social media.
The accusation made against me was that I had made inappropriate comments contrary to the party’s values of diversity and inclusivity as well as supporting another party.
In accordance with the party rules I lodged an appeal in strict accordance with the party’s procedures. To this day my appeal has never been heard.
The party both locally and centrally has become very dictatorial. The recent Owen Paterson affair is a prime example, which our local MP chose to vote for a change in the rules to try to protect him, which, I believe is a clear indication of a gross error of judgement.
As a minister in the Home Office our MP should be berating the Home Secretary regarding the total lack of control protecting our borders from illegal immigrants.
The government’s current stance is to blame the French. Do they not understand that it is they alone who are tasked with protecting our borders?
We, the residents of Redditch, are facing a very uncertain future regarding services at the Alexandra Hospital. Our local MP is publicly trying to support residents but I our MP is a member of the government and I say to her ‘those who pay the piper call the tune’.
Has the government no control over the failing Worcestershire Acute Trust? It seems not.
The recent decision to end the triple lock pension, a promise made in the Conservative manifesto.
This is just another example of how out of touch they are in supporting the old and vulnerable.
If the Conservative Party continues along this path I may decide to stand as an independent councillor in an effort to bring some sense of reality for the residents of Headless Cross and Oakenshaw.
R Bennett, former borough and county councillor and former Mayor of Redditch
AM I missing something here?
In Rachel Maclean’s column (Redditch Standard), she seems to be taking the credit for every pound of funding for the Alex Hospital since she was elected, but none of the blame for cuts that the NHS has been subjected to since her party took power over 11 years ago.
The scandal of huge sums of public money being given to cronies and acquaintances of Tory ministers is well documented.
Indeed some £37billion has been squandered on a useless test and trace system by Dido Harding, without any outside tendering.
Dido Harding, of course, just happens to be the wife of one of Mrs Maclean’s Tory colleagues, John Penrose MP.
Closer to home, over in Shropshire, we have the spectacle of a Tory MP having been caught taking huge sums of cash for lobbying on behalf of Randox who wanted an NHS contract.
The MP in question was found out by the parliamentary commissioner who recommended he be suspended from the house for 30 days. Instead of endorsing this punishment, Mrs Maclean then voted to abolish the system, on the instructions of the PM in order to save her career.
The opposition and a few decent Tories saw this for what it was and there was a massive public outcry.
The next day the PM did a spectacular U-turn and Mrs Maclean followed him.
I don’t know any member of the local NHS Trust, but I expect they are all hard working people doing their best in an underfunded and under resourced NHS.
Instead of sniping about others not doing their job, could I politely ask Mrs Maclean, if she is seriously interested in improving healthcare in Redditch that she speaks to her neighbouring MP for Bromsgrove, Sajid Javid and the PM, Boris Johnson, to start lining the coffers of the NHS and stop lining the pockets of fellow Tory MPs and their mates?
J Kane, Church Hill
I READ with interest a report last week in the Redditch Standard headlined ‘County Hall reduces emissions by almost a half in the last decade’.
Isn’t it great that the county council have reduced emissions by turning off two out of every three street lights across Worcestershire at night for the last seven years.
They applauded themselves at the time it would save £500,000 a year on carbon emissions.
Nothing to do with making cuts in funding of course.
I feel Worcestershire must have been so much safer over the years for this move – not. Especially as it took them until July this year to announce a climate emergency downgrading the request for Net Zero Carbon Plan by 2030 to 2050.
Mrs Disappointed, Redditch
I AM often critical of Redditch MP Mrs MacLean particularly on her voting record but I would like to record my appreciation for her excellent work trying to protect services at The Alex.
In addition according to the Register of Members Interests Mrs MacLean does not earn any money from second jobs which is in stark contrast to many of her colleagues!
I Welch, Redditch
