Help monitor blanket bog burning on Walshaw Moor – Tuesday 15 March

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Walshaw Moor Estate grouse shooting business is burning the blanket bog to such an extent that it is exposing and breaking the surface of the peat. This is not allowed under the conditions of the Estate’s Environmental Stewardship Agreement with Natural England.

Upper Calderdale Wildlife Group are monitoring the burning but they need help. If you’d like to learn how to be a burning monitor, please join them at 2pm on Tuesday 15 March at  Widdop Gate, at the start of the track to Gorple Lower reservoir (on the left hand side of the road coming from Hebden Bridge). Continue reading →

Team games hold key to solving the West Lothian Question – and why this matters for local government

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In 1977 Scottish Member of Parliament Tam Dalyell posed a question that is still a subject of controversy. Known as the ‘West Lothian Question’, it asks – Should Scottish Members of Parliament vote on issues concerning only the government of England?

This question is of wider relevance. It applies to any situation where there are two governments, with one whose domain of governance includes the other. For example: national government and local government. Continue reading →

Bit of good news for Campaign To Save Calderdale Art Psychotherapy Service

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The South West Yorkshire mental Health Trust has withdrawn redundancy notices they’d sent to Art Psychotherapy Staff, as campaigners have forced a halt to the proposed closure of Calderdale Art Therapy service. This now has to go to public consultation.

The service helps around 60 people with mental health problems and a service user instructed specialist lawyers at Irwin Mitchell to help the campaigners fight the proposed closure after staff were given redundancy notices.

Irwin Mitchell wrote to South West Yorkshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, which runs the service challenging the closure, based on an alleged failure to consult service users on the change. Continue reading →

Craig Whittaker MP claims an “authoritative study” shows there’s no need for NHS (Reinstatement) Bill – what study is this?

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Craig Whittaker has posted his refusal to constituents’ requests that he vote for the cross-party NHS (Reinstatement) Bill at its second reading in the House of Commons on 11 March.

His refusal includes the claim that:

“…an authoritative comparative study of the performance of different national health systems recently concluded that the NHS, from 2010 to 2015 was the best health service in the world.”

I’ve asked Craig Whittaker’s constituency office which study he’s talking about and they don’t know but say they will ask him and let me know, probably on Monday.

 

The only 2015 comparative study of the performance of different national health systems that I’ve come across is the OECD report, Health at a Glance. The data in this report is from 2013 (or nearest year), so doesn’t refer to the 2010-15 period. And it is far from indicating that the NHS was the best health service in the world at that time. The OECD report also says the NHS is under financial strain, with spending having remained static between 2009 and 2013, in real, per person terms.

 

So that can’t be the authoritative 2012 study that Craig Whittaker MP has referred to.

Here is Craig Whittaker’s refusal to vote for the NHS Bill: Continue reading →

Why Jason McCartney MP doesn’t support the NHS (Reinstatement) Bill: More contradictions than you can shake a stick at

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At the Hands off HRI Rally on Saturday 27th February, Jason McCartney MP said he would do everything in his power to keep the hospital open.

So the Chair of North Kirklees Support the NHS, Christine Hyde, said to him:

“Well in that case you could go to the House on 11 March and debate the cross party Bill called the NHS Bill and vote for it.”

Ms Hyde reported that Mr McCartney told her that if he was able to, he would.

However, Mr McCartney later told Plain Speaker:

“I have said on no occasion that I would support this Bill. On checking my diary I have commitments in the constituency that day so will not be able to attend the debate or vote either way on it. Continue reading →

Travel analysis for Huddersfield A&E closure shows extra 10k hours ambulance journey time/year

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The Clinical Commissioning Groups have finally published their travel analysis of the effects of closing Huddersfield A&E, which also includes modelling based on the closure of Dewsbury A&E.

We are still no closer to knowing whether the already overstretched and struggling Yorkshire Ambulance Service is going to be able to cope with the extra 10,071.86 hours journey time/year that would result from the closure of Huddersfield and Dewsbury A&Es, because the travel analysis doesn’t say anything about this, apart from the no-brainer that

“It is recommended that… YAS examine the findings of this report…”

Continue reading →

Calderdale community mental health service for the chop

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Right when proposals are afoot to cut hospital services on the grounds that it’s better for patients to have “Care Closer to Home”, users of an NHS community-based Art Psychotherapy service in Calderdale are fighting to save it from closure after the therapists were given compulsory redundancy notices over the Christmas period.

If the redundancies go ahead then vulnerable people with complex mental health problems will have their therapy terminated prematurely on the 31st March with no suitable alternative in place for them. Continue reading →

More privatisation and cuts for Calderdale mental health services

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In her deputation statement to the Calderdale & Kirklees Joint Health Scrutiny Committee yesterday, the Chair of Calderdale 38 Degrees NHS Campaign warned of the risk that the plan to move many services out of the hospitals into the “community” would repeat the the disastrous Care in the Community scheme of the 1980s/90s, that resulted from the closure of mental health hospitals.

Jane Rendle told Councillors:

“Once the hospitals had closed, funding for mental health Care in the Community was whittled away, leading to inadequate care and no hospital back up. Today we have the disastrous situation that sometimes there is not a single available mental health bed in the country.”

Now, history is repeating itself.  Clinical Commissioning Groups are pushing the un-evidenced “Care Closer to Home scheme” – while effective and cost-efficient community mental health services are for the chop. Users of an NHS community-based Art Psychotherapy service in Calderdale are fighting to save it from closure after the therapists were given compulsory redundancy notices over the Christmas period.

And increasingly, mental health services are being privatised. Continue reading →

NHS Commissioners still sitting on travel impact analysis of proposed A&E closure

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At the shambolic Calderdale and Kirklees Joint Health Scrutiny Committee (JHSC) meeting on 29th January, the Chair Cllr Elizabeth Smaje said that p255 of the Pre Consultation Business Case refers to a journey time assessment study and the JHSC will have a meeting about that and would like that study to be made available asap to JHSC.

This study is the Clinical Commissioning Groups’ travel impact analysis of their proposal to close one of our A&Es.

Since 4th February, I have repeatedly asked Calderdale Clinical Commissioning Group for this document – so far to no avail. Update 26.2.16 – the CCGs have now made public their travel impact analysis. Continue reading →