GP practice is in decline in Hastings. Appointments are already limited and waiting times long, and why is this? There simply aren't enough doctors. Deficit in training doctors, the unfair terms of junior doctor contracts and the unattractive proposition of a general practitioners workload in comparison to their salaries has meant that there is a shortage in GPs. The lack of doctors and the state of health and healthcare services in a town as affected by poverty as Hastings, should be a priority. Today, checking local job listings, I found 12 positions for GPs in Hastings in just the first search page. Multiple practices in the area are short of doctors and are advertising to no avail, and a few of the remaining practices are currently offering "inadequate" services, not through incompetence but that there is not enough doctors to cover the workload. 5 Practices have been taken over by IMH, a private healthcare provider, these practices are also struggling to recruit doctors and provide care to standard for their approximately 20,000 patients. We need to act now, as the worst end result of this is not privatization but that while conditions are worsening and there is a paucity of care thousands of patients with serious morbidities could deteriorate, unable to be seen. A&Es are not the answer for these people as they are already overloaded and waiting times in Hastings are particularly high. We need to make a stand and we need to do it now, we need to tell the Government that we do not accept these standards of care.

The Friary site was gifted in 1920 by Richard Cooper MP for the ‘permanent use and benefit of the citizens of Lichfield’. It’s an important and historic public resource for the people of Lichfield and surrounding areas. It is not just a library building, but a fantastic community hub. The proposals to relocate to St Mary’s in the Market Square would see a drastic reduction in floor size, so the space for books, computers and various community groups will be greatly diminished. Library services are evolving and public funding is being slashed, but the County Council has a duty to ensure an open and democratic public consultation about the future of the site, before any decisions are made on the future of the building. The County has shown a lack of transparency on it's strategy for disposal and some details of the deal have only recently been disclosed. To achieve the disposal of the whole site requires the Library and Record Office to move out. The County Council is obviously motivated by the financial pressures they are under rather than the local community benefit the services and site provide. Once the site is sold, it will be lost to the people of Lichfield forever.

The health centre, which has been in place for over thirty years, is no longer fit for purpose. Structurally the building requires significant investments for the level of repairs required and the level of capacity it is no longer able to accommodate the increasing demands placed upon it. In an area which has higher than both the Fife and Scottish levels of multiple health problems we need a Health Centre which is able to support the increasing population and provide support for the varying degrees of mental and physical support that the people of Lochgelly deserve.

Chancellor George Osborne is committed to cutting a further 100,000 Civil Service jobs by 2020 and shrinking the entire Government Estate by 75% before 2023. Government services that the public rely on are being decimated as a result of job cuts. Examples from the Passport Office, HMCTS, Land Registry, HMRC, DWP and elsewhere show that cuts in the Civil Service are having a negative impact on service users. Communities are being cut-off from local services. The Civil Service is near to breaking point, the digital technology replacing local services untested and unstable making the planned cuts unsustainable. In Stoke-on-Trent the HMRC have announced that Blackburn House tax office will close by or before 2020 with the loss of between 250-300 jobs to the local economy. Locally DWP has lost around a third of its workforce in the area since 2010 to the detriment of service delivery and the welfare of its remaining workforce. The impact of the loss of this significant number of jobs to the local economy and labour market cannot be underestimated. There is no clear evidence that growth in private sector jobs within the area will replace these jobs. We call on the Government to halt the cuts to Civil Service jobs in Stoke-on-Trent and North Staffordshire and invest in Central Government services within the region.

At yesterday's Penge Forum meeting which was very well attended, standing room only, residents, trustees and councillor’s agreed to set up an action group led by Cllr Kevin Brooks, to work with and support the Trustees to devise a plan to make the services provided at Melvin Hall financially sustainable. Trustees had given notice of closure to LBB but the portfolio holder for care appeared to have listened to the residents demand to save this vital service in Penge, and he suggested there was a possibility of further rent relief payments and an opportunity of hiring out the halls when not required by Age Concern. This is just a very brief update on our last blog on the possible closure of Melvin Hall. This facility has not yet been saved, there is still a long way to go so work needs to start now to engage with the Trustees and LBB and take this fight forward. Ever since opening at the end of the second world war the Melvin Hall Day Centre’s main aim has been to increase the happiness of the older people of Penge.

In 2007 consultation on mental health facilities in north Essex gave rise to lively public meetings which resulted in the ward being saved, but in 2016 there was NO consultation because apparently moving a ward to another hospital in another town so long as it bears the same name is NOT a closure!!! At the very least, N.E.P.T. (North Essex Partnership Trust predecessors along with S.E.P.T. South Essex Partnership Trust, to E.P.U.T. Essex Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust) should have held a new consultation process, but our feeling is still, along with the views and sentiments expressed by many eleven years ago, that nothing has changed, except that the facilities in Clacton needed revising including to allow for NHS single sex privacy and dignity accommodation, for which there was ample space available by using the adjacent and connected former Freeland Court. While people are often sent many miles away to find an available bed, we contended that mental health services could ill afford to lose beds in Clacton, though we would have welcomed extra beds in Colchester, but in addition, not instead of! As we were protesting the Colchester move we learnt from a whistleblower that the trust intended to downgrade the ward to an assessment centre, making a mockery of their assertion that the ward would be exactly the same in it's new location and if true, this would be a very definite change of service demanding thorough consultation! This was vehemently denied at the time but now we learn, not even 18 months later that service changes are being considered and this time, unlike the move, they do intend to consult! If after a wide consultation among all stakeholders including professionals, staff and public it can be demonstrated that the consulted changes would be in the best interest of patients, we shall be content, though we do not believe it will. If, as we are led to believe, the plans are indeed to downgrade Peter Bruff from an acute ward to an assessment centre this will amount to a de facto loss of 17 beds at a time of continuing high occupancy and the likelihood exists that patients needing continuing acute care may not find a bed within Colchester hospital and maybe forced to travel many miles away to find one. Two years ago we raised concerns over the difficulties many living in Clacton would face accessing Colchester. "With Colchester being about 15 miles away from Clacton concern was raised for patients who when discharged would face an expensive taxi bill or the prospect of at least two buses, train, long walk or combination! This distance would also likely make it difficult for many reasons, perhaps financial, for friends and families of patients to visit. Day visits and weekend visits home, for those recovering all made that more difficult when recovery itself is difficult enough!" 15 miles may soon seem like wishful thinking! And all this mainly on the pretext of saving the money spent on rent at Clacton!. Here's what we found out about that! " N.E.P.T. did not own the Clacton Peter Bruff Ward, but RENTED it from NHS Properties!! This was one of their excuses for wishing to CLOSE, I mean, MOVE the ward so as to save money on rent, but a freedom of information request revealed that N.E.P.T. were in fact only paying a "PEPPERCORN RENT!" https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/346733/response/855134/attach/2/FOI%20190716%2001%20reply%2018.8.16.pdf?cookie_passthrough=1 Safeguarding the service as it is may well be within our gift. It is doubtless thanks to everyone's efforts that E.P.U.T. are contemplating any consultation whatsoever because our first notification from a whistleblower indicated a fait d'compli. Well done everyone! I still dream that the day will come when we can "Keep Peter Bruff Ward Open In CLACTON!

Margate has The Turner Centre and Dreamland to attract visitors. We have our beautiful Royal Harbour, Tunnels and wonderful cafe culture but we need more reasons for families to visit. Thanet as a whole would benefit from the added tourism as we would be able to offer a better package, more reasons to visit. The wheel would not incur huge capital investment, ongoing leasing fees would be paid for out of revenue, therefore no risk to the council.

The Practice Group plc (a private company) has been running The Willows Surgery in Lower Bevendean along with four other GP surgeries in Brighton and Hove. At the beginning of this year they announced that they would no longer be running their Brighton and Hove surgeries after June (this already follows the closure of two of the city's GP surgeries last year). This announcement has left a huge hole and The Willows is now threatened with closure. Lower Bevendean is in a somewhat isolated area on the outskirts of Brighton. It is an area of mostly low income households and is made up of largely council and ex-council housing. The surgery has just under 2,000 patients and all have been feeling extremely anxious since the news. No-one wants to see their GP surgery close down! If The Willows were to close patients would have to travel outside their local area to see a doctor. The nearest GP to Lower Bevendean would be a long trek up and down a hilly area and as a large number of The Willows patients are elderly or disabled or in poor health they would not be able to manage the extra travel to see a Doctor. Even if travelling wasn't a problem, the nearest GP surgery simply has not got the capacity to take on an extra 2,000 patients. So realistically patients would have to travel a lot further to register with a new GP. As there seems to be no 'highest priority' scheme in place, the elderly and the less able bodied will be the last in the race to find a new GP and will find themselves having to travel the furthest. We've heard reports of elderly patients in tears as they are so worried about what will happen if their doctor disappears from their community. The less frail residents are angry. Why must they travel across the city to see a doctor? How is it possible that an NHS GP will vanish from the neighbourhood because the private company who were running the surgery decided that they wanted to earn more profit from us? In order to keep our NHS public we need to fight the 'behind our backs' privatisation of our health services! We need to make sure that our health service is about people and not profits! The community in Lower Bevendean need your support in their fight to stop the closure of The Willows GP Surgery. The community of Lower Bevendean needs to have local access to a GP and they require NHS England, along with Brighton and Hove CCG to ensure that a GP service will continue at the Willows Surgery !

This has heavily impacted on the local community. Many people, especially the elderly in this rural area, rely on public transport for getting around Perthshire and to the major Scottish cities. As a popular tourist destination it also makes it much harder for visitors to reach us by bus. Please sign this petition to show that people value our public transport and how important it is in rural areas.

The organization helps thousands of vulnerable, including people with mental health issues and disadvantaged Derby and Derbyshire residents a year with debt advice, free legal assistance and advocacy. It is vital these groups get help and support.

Currently our health service is in crisis and are failing to deliver a service that we, the tax payer are paying for. The mill stone of PFI is bringing the national health service closer and closer to the door marked private health service and this Government is pushing it closer and to closer to this door unless we stand up and be counted. Make no mistake the smoke and mirror of free at the point of delivery is just that smoke and mirrors and by tomorrow we will no longer have a national health service. Waiting times are through the roof, Junior doctor being victimised and bullied into accepting a new contract not fit for purpose by Jeremy Hunt. Ambulance services on their knees and patients are suffering and dying because of staff shortage and stretched resources to pay off the PFI bill and not because Junior Doctors do not work, which they do, on weekends. The PFI are forcing Health services to make cuts across the board and this is to reduce the wage bill so that share holders are paid there dividends at the end of the month. So if we want to save our health service then we need to nationalise the PFI dept and to this end we need to be patitioning our local MP's to suppor the nationalising of the PFI's

It is a sacrilege and a disgrace to have so many empty buildings (paid and subsidised by us the tax payers) when they could be used for greater good. KCC do the right thing and open up your empty buildings to the homeless now!!!