Hebden Royd Town Council has voted to refuse a planning application for a Sainsbury’s Local and five townhouses on the old fire station site on Valley Road.
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The law courts twice ruled that the Secretary of State for Health Jeremy Hunt was acting unlawfully in trying to force closures at South Lewisham Hospital, in order to redirect its funding to a nearby NHS Trust that had been bankrupted by Private Finance Initiative re-payments and taken into the control of Trust Special Administrators. So now the ConDem government is changing the law to give precisely this power to Trust Special Administrators who have been brought in to deal with failing NHS Trusts. And Calder Valley MP Craig Whittaker has voted for this new legislation.
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Dr Chris Day has resigned as the Chair of Calderdale Healthwatch Programme Board. His resignation took place at the Board’s meeting on 13th January, after the Board voted in favour of a motion to exclude the public from the meeting.
Dr Day said,
“I opposed this motion and took a vote, but the motion was carried and I stood down as chair of the Board. I explained that I believed transparency and openness were being rejected in this motion and that I believed them to be such fundamental operating principles that I could not continue in this role. The public were removed from the meeting.”
Hebden Royd Town Council has unanimously passed Cllr Dave Young’s motion that the Council should refuse Sainsbury’s request for a meeting to discuss their proposal to build a Sainsbury’s Local on the old fire station site on Valley Road, and should instead invite Sainsbury’s to call a public meeting to discuss their proposals.
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Hebden Royd Town Council meeting at 7.30pm on 8th January will hear of Sainsbury’s request to meet the Council, in order to discuss their plans to build a Sainsbury’s Local supermarket on the site of the former fire station on Valley Road.
The Town Council will consider this request for a meeting as part of Agenda Item 4 – Communications from the Mayor and Town Clerk. A number of Hebden Bridge people have also written to the Town Clerk about Sainsbury’s plan, and the Council will also hear their emails and letters.
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During 2013, Calder Valley MP Craig Whittaker received donations worth £57,468.77, according to Search The Money website.
The screenshot from the Search The Money website gives the breakdown of the donations:
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Craig Whittaker MP has voted in favour of the House of Commons second reading of the Care Bill – including Clause 118 that makes it possible to close hospitals, A&E departments and other other departments, without proper public consultation. This is at odds with the Tory manifesto commitment to “stop the forced closure of A&E and maternity wards”
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This morning I emailed my MP, Craig Whittaker and asked him to read a new, independent report by the Commission on Civil Society and Democratic Engagement on Part 2 of the gagging law.
The Report says that the gagging bill:
“does not meet any of the tests of good regulation.”
It also makes a number of recommendations about how the Bill can be fixed.
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Dear Craig Whittaker,
The Coalition Government is taking a Care Bill through Parliament that will make it possible to close hospitals and A&E and other departments without proper public consultation.
As you will know, the House Of Lords recently voted to accept Earl Howe’s last-minute amendment to the Care Bill. Amendment 168 essentially makes it possible for hospitals and A&E and other departments to be closed without public consultation – however successful, useful and popular they are.
The hospital closure clause 118, along with the rest of the Care Bill, will be debated and voted on in the Commons on 16th December. Clause 118 would allow any hospital to be closed down, or lose its A&E, maternity or other services, with hardly any local consultation.
I believe you have a responsibility to the public to make sure that this terrible Clause does not become law.
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Calderdale 38 Degrees is organising two handovers of the National 38 degrees petition against the Gagging Bill: one to Linda Riordan MP on 13th December 12.15 at Shaw Lodge. The other, to Craig Whittaker MP, took place on Sunday 8th December at 11am at Ripponden Market.
If the Gagging Bill becomes law, it will effectively outlaw civil society involvement in election campaigns and allow government to carry out a data grab on Trade Union membership – opening up the possibility of blacklisting union members.
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