Birch Ward

But, seeing as I’m back, here’s my thoughts on the recent announcement that one of the wards at St Cross Hospital is about to close:

Birch Ward’s shut down at the end of the month is appalling for the town. There hasn’t been any real consultation. It seems that some people heard about it before others – Jerry Roodhouse and Mark Pawsey were quick to comment, but the local PCT – who commission medical procedures at St Cross for the people of the town were not (so I am told) asked for their opinion.

The Tories will blame the last government, and their pals in the Lib Dems will play the same card. However, the pressures on hospital trusts are being imposed by this government despite promises to ‘ringfence’ the NHS. On top of taking a hard line on budgets – causing one hospital to have been transferred to the private sector where the company itself has suggested that care may suffer – they are pressing ahead with the plan to impose a massive restructure. even though the Health Bill has not been passed yet, they have closed agencies and started to spend some of the £3billion that the reorganisation will cost.

Still, the local Tories and Lib Dems can do something. They can work with the Rugby Labour councillors who have called for UHCW to reconsider the decision, and they can join the calls for a Judicial Review.

Police cuts… Crime rises… Who could predict it?

I know it’s been ages since my last post. I’ve been feeling disillusioned with the internet and bogging of late, and have been pretty busy in real life, so let it slip.

But I saw this today that just shows how the Coalition Government’s cuts may be having a directly negative effect:
Police departures led to surge in crime (Rugby Observer)

Basically, Warwickshire Police are faced with having to make massive cuts. To help them manage, they moved experienced officers from Rugby to Nuneaton to cover gaps. But after that happened, the incidence of home burglaries in Rugby leapt up by about 75%. So they ended up having to bring some of them back again.

Which is fine for Rugby, for now, in that the effect was pretty quick and crime went down again. But it strikes me that other parts of the County will be lacking full cover as a result.

When the Tories (backed by their yellow pals) went for 20% cuts in policing, they claimed it could be done without affecting the front line and that predictions of an effect on crime was ‘scaremongering’. But the evidence suggests that, as senior officers themselves said at the time, the cuts are forcing the Police to make tough decisions, with some areas losing vital cover.

Rugby Town Centre – missing out

80m a year going out of Town Centre

I saw this headline when I walked past a copy of the Rugby Advertiser at the weekend, and now that they have put the report up on their website I had a chance to read it properly.

Essentially, the suggestion is that ‘more affluent shoppers’ are not catered for. I’m not sure what that means, really. Yes there are a number of cheap shops, a growing number of charity shops, and the main in-town supermarkets are Asda and Morrisons, which compete on price rather than quality.

What I find, however, is that Rugby lacks mid-market shops and certain sectors. We have one independent bookshop, Hunts.

Mast Site plans

Last night I went to the Eastlands & Hillmorton Community Forum meeting at the Hillmorton school. These are organised to bring together the County Council, Borough Council and Police to discuss issues with local people. Every three months, for example, the local beat officers present updates on their work and there’s a discussion about the three areas they should prioritise for the next three months.

There were a lot of people there who wanted to talk about the proposals for development to the East of the town, on the old radio mast sites.

Where did that £50K go?

Back in Spring, the Borough Council agreed their new budget. Having rejected several ways to try and help local businesses in the recession (and so ending successful schemes), the council decided to allocate £50,000 to renew the Christmas lights in the Town Centre.

This evening I walked around the town centre, and couldn’t see much difference between this year and last year. The Clock Tower still has its lame strips of lights about half-way up.

So did the money get spent? And on what? Was it more worthwhile than grants to help shops improve their frontage, or rate rebates to incentivise new business?

National Cuts, Local Effects

Each of the three main local news sites covering Rugby has an article pertinent to the round of cutbacks we are all going to be experiencing.

The Rugby Observer reports that the Police Station in town will only be open to the public from the front desk for 12 hours a day, starting next Monday (1 Nov). The Cov/Warks Telegraph highlights a study which suggests that between them, Coventry and Warwickshire will be losing 16,000 public sector jobs with nearly 40,000 more in the private sector put at risk. The report suggests that Warwickshire could be badly hit, and towns like Rugby and Stratford have vulnerable private firms.

Mind you, on the other side, the Advertiser brings news that Rugby Borough Council is hoping to replace the Ken Marriott Leisure Centre with a new facility. This was covered at the Cabinet meeting last week. There it was agreed to commit £200,000 of capital to investigating tenders for the project.

Now, as much as it would be great to have a new Leisure Centre, it seems a bit incongruous to spent a six-figure sum on a project that might not even go ahead, let alone the likely millions that the full build would require, at a time when the Government and councils are cutting spending.

At the same meeting, the Cabinet discussed (I say ‘discussed’, it was more nodded through) a report on the money stuck in Icelandic banks. Rugby had about £3M in two banks. Landsbanki, with about £1M is agreeing to pay back 95% of the money over the next eight years – as long as the overall plan is not successfully challenged by other creditors. In terms of lost interest and depreciation, this would represent a loss of about £400,000 by the time all the money is returned.

The other bank, Glitnir, had the remaining £2M, but the offer there is only 38%. The council are challenging that one, of course, but if it goes that way, the end result means that about half of the original £3M would be lost.

With that background, what are the Council going to use to pay for a new Leisure Centre?

Police cuts in Rugby

A few weeks ago, when the proposals to remove the Magistrates Court in Rugby came out, there was a fear that there would be some impact on the Police Station next door, such as the loss of the custody cells.

And we were told that this would not be the case.

But since then, the police service have started a review of their own: Eight Warwickshire police stations under threat (Cov Telegraph). The review is into the ‘front desk services’ across the county, but according to the report

The stations under review are Atherstone, Bedworth, Coleshill, Kenilworth, Rugby, Shipston, Southam and Stratford, which could be relocated into shared facilities or see their opening hours reduced.

If the front desks are moved to a ‘shared facility’ that could be somewhere else in the same area. Which would probably see reduced opening hours as well. We’ve already seen that police numbers are set to be cut. Now we’re likely to be in a situation where if you go to the Police Station it might not be open to the public.

More on Brinklow

The local press have a few more updates on the decision to close Brinklow, Studley and Warwick fire stations.

Firstly, the Telegraph tells us that the County Council spent £3,700 on a consultant who told the meeting that a lot of the opposition was ‘emotional’.

And secondly the Advertiser has a more complete report of the meeting – including how each councillor in the Rugby area voted. The local Fire fighters say that they feel ‘stabbed in the back’ by the following Tories in Rugby who voted to close the stations:

Peter Butlin, Robin Hazelton, Carolyn Robbins, John Vereker, Helen Walton, Claire Watson and David Wright

Remember their names, wnen it comes to election time.

The Tories and St Cross

First, an update on Mark Pawsey MP. Apparently he went to see the Trust heads about their proposals to cut the A&E department at St Cross Hospital. Let’s see how influential he is.

Before the election, Mr Pawsey was clear about his commitment to services at St Cross. He had the shadow Health Secretary of the time (and of course, now the actual Secretary of State), Andrew Lansley, come up to the town to campaign. At the end of the day, our MP can only get any concessions or changes if the Health Secretary is amenable to them

Before the election, Lansley said that he had seen the plans that would retain the emergency department. After the election, these plans involve at the very least removing the overnight provision, and possibly the whole thing. So it would be nice to know what it was that he saw.

Before the election, Lansley said that he would stop all proposals to remove services from district hospitals like St Cross until after a proper review had taken place. But these proposals are now going to be consulted on, so clearly he has not put a moratorium on them.

(source for last two paragraphs : Coventry Telegraph.)

Mind you, this is the same Andrew Lansley who before the election promised no large-scale changes to the NHS imposed from the centre, and today announced the policy to… massively change the way that the NHS is run by forcing GPs to hold the purse-strings. It’s also the same Andrew Lansley who flipped his house for profit and tried to get the taxpayer to fund improvements that increased the value.

Tracking the cuts

Now that the coalition government has set its course – Cuts, Cuts, Cuts – I think we need to be wary of what the effects of them are. It’s easy for the government and propagandists to make out that the public sector are simply ‘mooching’ from the private sector. The reality is more complex than that:

While the public sector is paid for out of taxation (including duties, fees for services etc), and that mainly will come from the rest of the economy, it is also true that the public sector buys goods and services from the private sector. Also, everyone employed by either sector will be acting in both sectors. Public sector employees buy things from shops. Private sector employees get healthcare which means they don’t have to take as much time off work as they might otherwise. Trying to pretend the two are competitors and there’s no interaction beyond tax and spend is at best naive and at worst outright dishonest.

So, now that England are out of the World Cup, and now that it’s taken a few weeks for the new government to settle in and set out it’s stall, I’m trying to find out what the actual effects of cuts are, and particularly where it concerns Rugby and the local area.

Here’s a start:

Warwickshire County Council are looking into reducing the subsidies that are supporting the provision of day care and respite care for adults. If the changes go ahead, then the costs of care for some of the most vulnerable adults in the county could well soar.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/coventry_and_warwickshire/10449864.stm

http://www.stratford-herald.com/mainstory.php?ID=2411

In the next three weeks (on July 20th), Warwickshire County Council will make a decision on whether to close rural fire stations. The original proposals brought out a lot of opposition and the Council put off their deliberations until after the elections (can’t think why they might do that). It’s claimed not to be about cutting costs, but a lot of people locally are not convinced.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/coventry_and_warwickshire/10318180.stm

The future of the A&E unit at St. Cross Hospital is being reviewed, with a further limit to the types of cases that can be treated there being suggested. Again, it’s not supposed to be about cutting costs, but about improving services.

http://www.therugbyobserver.co.uk/news22590.html