Month: February 2024
‘We’ve seen off the immediate threat but there’s a lot more to do to save the Hospital’
This was the message at this afternoon’s meeting in the Old Picture House, Seaton. Members of the Hospital Steering Committee, from left to right Jack Rowland (Chair), Martin Shaw (Secretary), Cllr John Heath and Richard Foord MP, gave a full update to fifty or so supporters of the Hospital campaign. The Committee is working hard to develop a plan to use a wing of the hospital for services including dementia care and mental health, and hopes to have a plan agreed with the NHS and NHS Property Services by the summer.
Richard Foord gets government minister to disown plans to demolish Seaton Hospital
In his campaign to support Seaton Hospital in Parliament, Richard Foord, our MP, secured a second adjournment debate on Friday, on the accountability of NHS Property Services which owns the Hospital.
In an eloquent contribution (read it in full, it’s well worth it), Richard pointed out that since the Hospital is owned by NHS Property Services and that company is wholly owned by the government, the government could and should change Property Services’ policy of charging clinical ‘market rents’ for any use of hospital space, in cases like Seaton where the local community has paid for the hospital.
The minister replying said the government couldn’t intervene to change the policy for a particular case, thereby ducking Richard’s request that the government change the policy in relation to community hospitals in general. Nevertheless, he did say that there are no plans to demolish a wing of Seaton Hospital, which would ‘very much be a last resort in any event’ – although of course we know that the Devon NHS sourced government funding to do precisely that.
The minister also referred to the fact that the site has now been listed as an asset of community value, ‘which means that such a drastic step is exceedingly unlikely to be supported by the local planning authority or other local stakeholders’. We have East Devon District Council, led by Colyton Liberal Democrat councillor Paul Arnott, to thank for that.
Will Simon Jupp repudiate Mad Liz Truss’s new extremism?
The Conservative Party is embroiled in a new wave of far-right extremism, with Suella Braverman as well as Lee Anderson inciting hostility to Muslims and Liz Truss, appearing with the notorious US far-rightist Steve Bannon, accepting his praise of the extreme-right agitator Tommy Robinson as well as herself endorsing Donald Trump and his threat to democracy in all but name.
Simon Jupp MP, who is now the Conservative candidate for our constituency, welcomed Mad Liz Truss when she became prime minister 18 months ago and supported her catastrophic mini-budget (see the photo above, which he posted on his Twitter feed). Will he now condemn her new extremism and back calls for her to lose the Tory whip?
Claire Wright’s fulsome endorsement of Paul Arnott
Claire writes (from Facebook): I am really happy to announce that I am backing Paul Arnott to take Exmouth and Exeter East in the general election! For those of you not familiar with Paul, he is the Liberal Democrat leader of East Devon District Council, presiding over a rainbow coalition of LibDem, Independent and Green…
— Read on eastdevonwatch.org/2024/02/13/breaking-claire-wrights-fulsome-endorsement-of-paul-arnott/
Paul Arnott to stand for new Exmouth constituency
Paul Arnott, leader of East Devon District Council and long-time Colyton resident, is to stand for the Liberal Democrats in the new Exmouth & Exeter East constituency. Paul, who has been an inspiring leader of EDDC, co-founded the East Devon Alliance of Independents in 2013 and joined the Lib Dems when Richard Foord was fighting to become our MP in the 2022 by-election.
Most of the new Exmouth constituency is the old East Devon seat held first by Hugo Swire and now by Simon Jupp. Claire Wright, who stood as an Independent and was second in the last three elections (running Jupp close in 2019) is supporting Paul this time, and got together with him this week (above).
Since Labour have said that Exmouth (like Honiton & Sidmouth) is not a ‘battleground seat’ for them, Paul is now the frontrunner to defeat the Tories in this seat. Together, Paul and Richard could give East Devon an excellent voice in the new Parliament.
NHS Devon rectifies procedural error, confirms intention to hand back whole wing of Hospital
When NHS Devon’s Integrated Care Board (ICB) decided last autumn to hand back part of Seaton Hospital to NHS Property Services for disposal, the report it approved referred only to the former ward accommodation on the ground floor of the 1991 wing, although verbally they claimed to be handing back the wing as a whole, i.e. also including first floor offices being used by the Community Team (who visit patients in their homes) and the League of Friends Hospice at Home team. Thus although they claimed to only handing back unused space, they were in fact disposing of space that is still in use.
When we finally saw the report in late December, I wrote to the ICB pointing out that they did not have the authority to hand back the whole wing. This week, they put forward a new paper rectifying their error, and indicating that the Community Team offices would be moved to other rooms on the ground floor, including the area recently used as a vaccination suite.
The Seaton Hospital Steering Committee objected to this on the grounds that the suite in the Hospital had been very successful and it is important for vaccinations to be available locally. My question about this was read out by the chair, Dr Sarah Wollaston, at their Board meeting today, but they rejected our request to restrict the handback to the former ward area. She said that emptying the wing ‘facilitates the handback’, and that while they understand the concerns about the vaccination suite, they have an excellent track record of using all relevant spaces for vaccinations (thus she ignored our point that we need this facility locally). You can watch at NHS Devon board meetings – YouTube – it’s right at the end of today’s meeting.
The Steering Committee continues its discussions about uses of spaces in the Hospital and will meet representatives of the ICB and Property Services in the Hospital a week today.
More deliberately misleading advertising from Jupp
Simon Jupp, the MP for the constituency centred on Exmouth, but who is standing as a candidate for our area in the election, is putting out this brochure in Colyton (sent to me by a resident) claiming to be the ‘local MP’, although in fact that is Richard Foord.
Inside, he also claims to be ‘working with health bosses’ to save Seaton Hospital, although of course it is Richard Foord who is doing that, it is Richard who is on our hospital steering committee, and it is Richard who is repeatedly raising the issue in Parliament.
This is deliberately misleading material, although not a surprise from Jupp, who likes to claim he lives locally but only moved into the area to stand as MP.
What is a surprise is that the Gateway in Seaton has allowed Jupp a second slot presenting a quiz night. You’d have really thought that any local community enterprise would think twice before hitching itself so clearly to one side in the election, and especially to the party that caused the dismembering of Seaton Hospital in the first place.
Seaton & Colyton MATTERS 