Month: September 2024
Seaton Museum – Facebook and JustGiving pages launched, tributes to Ted planned
Seaton Museum now has a Facebook page and also a JustGiving page – the Museum needs your support and all donations will be gratefully received.
The AGM of the Axe Valley Heritage Association, which runs the Museum, is on 30 October at 2pm in the United Reformed Church, Cross Street. The Acting curator, Laura Hewitt, will give a report on the future of the museum and I will be giving a tribute to Ted.
Laura has asked me to edit the Museum’s Newsletter and the first issue will be on the Museum’s history, including a full tribute to Ted. I should be very grateful for any anecdotes or suggestions on points to include.
Hugo Swire, who sabotaged Seaton Hospital, uses new perch in Lords to promote community hospitals
Swire obviously thinks we have forgotten. He is the man who, having been MP for Seaton until boundaries changed in 2005, spoke in Parliament in 2016 to say that if beds were kept anywhere, it should be in Sidmouth – leading the CCG to switch Seaton’s beds, which they had originally planned to keep, to our neighbouring town. A key moment in the Seaton Hospital crisis, whose effects we are still dealing with today.
Richard Foord calls debate on trying Putin for aggression in Ukraine
Richard used his position as MP and Lib Dem spokesman to call a special parliamentary debate on the need for a special international tribunal to try Vladimir Putin for the crime of aggression, which is a fundamental breach of the UN Charter. All the specific crimes that Russia has committed, and all the disruption to European and world stability that it has caused, come down to this basic crime.
It’s important that initiatives like this are made. You can watch Richard’s speech here.
RD&E: ‘some of our people do not feel safe coming to work’ after racist riots
The CEO and chair of the Royal Devon University Healthcare trust, which runs the RD&E, have felt it necessary to include this unprecedented statement in their latest newsletter:
“Last month saw deplorable violence and intimidation in towns and cities across the UK. We wholeheartedly condemn the deliberate acts of violence and racism that have taken place and we want to make a clear statement about our values and behaviours as an organisation.
“Inclusion is one of our core values and we take pride in having a diverse workforce and a culture that respects everybody. The values we hold, and the behaviours we expect from staff, students, patients and visitors, mean that we will not tolerate discrimination or abuse of any kind.
“Our workforce is made up of talented and committed people from all around the world. Their diversity, expertise and skill are our strength and enable us to provide truly world-class services for people in need in our local communities.
“It has been heartening to see many thousands of people come together to join protests against the violence and racism. But we know that some of our people do not feel safe coming to work and that is unacceptable.
“Our priority is to build a culture at work where our people feel safe, healthy and supported. Whilst we have a wide range of support in place for our people we ask for your help in ensuring that all of our colleagues feel safe and welcome.
“We expect people who use our services to treat those who are caring for them with courtesy, kindness and respect and vice versa. We will take action against those who do not.
“We pride ourselves on being an inclusive and respectful community where we can all live and work safely. We believe very strongly that there is no place for hate in our homes, on our streets, in our clinics, in our hospitals, in our NHS or in our country.”
Report damns Lansley ‘reforms’ as ‘calamity’ for the NHS – what does it mean for NHS Property Services and Seaton Hospital?
The government’s new report describes the 2012 Health and Social Care Act (the ‘Lansley reforms’) as ‘a calamity without international precedent’, and says that management systems and structures are ‘still reeling from the turbulent decade’ that it began. It involved a ‘costly and distracting process of almost constant reorganisation’ in the NHS.
Yet the report doesn’t specifically mention NHS Property Services, which was set up as a result of the Act, to which Seaton Hospital was then handed over – beginning all our problems. Richard Foord wrote to the new Health secretary, Wes Streeting, after the election, asking for him to look at the hospital problem – this is surely time for this issue to be looked at by the new government.
Richard Foord votes against winter fuel payment cut
Richard has voted against – as I would have done. Although some pensioners, like me, don’t need the payments, others (apart from people on benefits, who will keep them) will be at risk from rising fuel prices. The state pension remains one of the lowest in Europe, and those without private pensions need the payments. The government should have made the payments taxable, so that they would have saved money from better-off pensioners. There are many people with broader shoulders than the average pensioner
www.sidmouthherald.co.uk/news/24575984.honiton-sidmouth-mp-votes-winter-fuel-payment-cut/
Seaton Hospital – why we are on hold
This email from Jack Rowland has just gone to Hospital campaign supporters and the press.
Well here we are in mid September and you may be wondering what has been happening with our campaign to utilise the empty wing at Seaton Hospital for the benefit of the community.
You may recall that a steering group was set up as a result of the public meeting held on 3 November last year. At that meeting speakers highlighted the action that may be taken by NHS Property Services (NHSPS) as NHS Devon Integrated Care Board (ICB) had been paying £300k per annum in rent and maintenance to NHSPS ever since the wing became empty as a result of the decision made to remove inpatient beds from the site. In view of the financial position of the ICB and the pressure they are under to cut expenditure they had indicated they wanted to stop paying the £300k per annum.
Our steering group has been recognised by NHSPS and the ICB as the body to consult and negotiate with and a timetable was established at the beginning of this year to have monthly meetings starting in February with the agreed target of the steering group producing a business plan by the end of June.
Thanks to the tremendous work carried out by a member of our steering group, Ben Tucker, along with Kirstine House and support from myself a business plan was submitted to NHSPS and the ICB in mid June. In addition to producing the business plan Ben arranged and held meetings with third parties interested in leasing space in the empty wing that also complied with the vision we had for using the space.
As a result of those meetings many of the third parties signed expressions of interest and these were built into the business plan. In order to fund the building works and contribute to the first year running costs we also submitted a grant funding application to the Government backed Community Ownership Fund by their deadline date earlier this year.
So why no further news since the end of June?
Quite simply the calling of the General Election on 4 July and the resulting change of government has put everything on ice in obtaining a definitive response to the business plan and the grant application.
Since July we have been following up on both subjects and we are due to meet NHSPS and the ICB on 19 September. We understand that NHSPS are submitting a paper regarding our business plan to the next board meeting of NHSPS by which time we also hope to have received news on the grant application. However, it appears that many public bodies are waiting for the new Chancellor’s Budget announcement on 30 October and there is a risk that decisions will be delayed until after this.
Jack Rowland
Chair – on behalf of the Seaton Hospital Steering Group
Seaton Museum meeting announced
The Axe Valley Heritage Association which runs Seaton Museum will hold its AGM, which was postponed during the final illness of Ted Gosling, on Wednesday 30th October at 2 pm in the United Reformed Church Hall, Cross Street, Seaton.
The Trustees have asked me to deliver a tribute to Ted, who founded the Museum and was its curator for a third of a century. The Acting Curator, Laura Hewitt, who is expected to be confirmed as Curator by the meeting, will talk about how she sees future of the Museum and what the next steps will be.
All Museum supporters are welcome and anyone who is not a member can join at the door (£10, or £12 for joint membership).
Tribute to Ted Gosling
I have written the following which has appeared in the Midweek Herald, from which this photo of Ted, taken in 2019 when Seaton Town Council congratulated him on his 90th birthday, is taken:
Ted Gosling, the Curator of Seaton Museum and the only person ever to be made a Freeman of Seaton, has died aged 95. Ted was a part of Seaton life for over 80 years and had a unique memory of its history from the 1930s onwards, which he was passionate about sharing. Over more than half a century, he collected material about the history of the town and his collection became the nucleus of the Seaton Museum, which he founded over thirty years ago and which is located on the top floor of Seaton Town Hall. He remained Curator until his death.
Prior to the foundation of Seaton Museum, Ted had been in business in Seaton and was Curator of Lyme Regis Museum. At Seaton Museum, and in the Axe Valley Heritage Association which he established to run and support it, Ted gathered around him a dedicated team of volunteers, and organised regular trips to places of interest around the County and beyond.
Ted had an encyclopedic memory, an enthusiasm for knowledge and a capacity for writing which led him to produce numerous books on the history of Seaton, Colyton, Axmouth and more widely East Devon and the County at large, most notably The Book of Seaton. He researched the early history of the town in the Roman and medieval eras and in its Victorian heyday after the coming of the railway in 1868. He also filled most of the pages of the Newsletter which he edited for the Museum and sent regularly to its supporters. In his 90s, he founded the Seaton Memories Facebook group which now has 3,500 members.
Ted was a witness to the transformation of Seaton, whose population trebled during its lifetime. He lived through and documented its role in the Second World War, when US troops were based in the town in the preparations for D-Day, the rise and fall of the holiday camp, the closure of the railway, and the building of Seaton Hospital.
Ted was aware of how valuable history could be in the present. In 2017, when Seaton Hospital’s beds were threatened with closure, he gave me a copy of Mary Wood’s pamphlet on the history of the Hospital, published by Seaton League of Friends in 1991. He told me that ‘the times when the town really came together were in 1940 when we were threatened with invasion and in the 1980s when we raised the funds for the Hospital’. Without that pamphlet, I would not have known that Seaton raised 100 per cent of the funds for the wing of the Hospital that was threatened in 2023.
Ted was greatly loved by many in Seaton and will be sorely missed. He is survived by his wife, Carol, children and grandchildren. A Book of Condolences is open for signature in Seaton Library.
The Museum’s Assistant Curator, Laura Hewitt, is currently the Acting Curator and its Trustees, of whom I am one, are meeting this week to plan its future, about which announcements will be made in due course.
Seaton & Colyton MATTERS 