BE A BRICK
You’ll see that this site has been renamed and my portrait has been replaced by a brick with the above words on it.
This photo shows the small commemorative brick given to each of the thousands who donated to the building of Seaton Hospital 30 years ago. The other side of the brick says HELP SEATON & DISTRICT HOSPITAL.
It needs your help again – BE A BRICK, come to the meeting on Friday, and support the campaign in the coming weeks.
Our community paid for ALL the bricks in the wing they want to sell off – don’t let them get away with it!
Breaking: Richard Foord secures Adjournment Debate on Seaton Hospital
From East Devon Watch:
Richard Foord has secured an Adjournment Debate early in the new parliament. These last half an hour and provide an opportunity for an individual backbench MP to raise an issue and receive a response from the relevant Minister. Monday, 13 November 2023: Upcoming business http://www.theyworkforyou.com Commons: Main Chamber Debate on the Address Seaton Community Hospital…
— Read on eastdevonwatch.org/2023/10/27/breaking-richard-foord-secures-adjournment-debate-on-seaton-hospital/
Seaton Heights fire shows we were right to save Colyton fire station
I was caught up in the traffic dislocation on Seaton Down Hill – I had to go back via Seaton to pick up my brother from Axminster station (although I arrived late, the train was later still, as usual).
Now I realise how serious the blaze was I’m just thinking how fortunate it was that we still had the Colyton fire crew as well as Seaton’s. There’s no substitute for truly local facilities and trained personnel, and we must fight for them.
A fire has broken out at the derelict Seaton Heights site. Fire crews from across the South West have been sent to the scene on Monday following the …
Massive fire breaks out at derelict holiday camp
The Seaton area community has given £5.25 million to Seaton Hospital – give it back to us
In 2016, I added up the contributions that the local community had made to the hospital. It came to over £2.8 million in constant prices, which represented over £4 million at 2016 prices. I have now used the Bank of England’s inflation calculator to produced an updated estimate. The local donations amount to £5,251,830 at September 2023 prices – and that’s not counting donations since 2016.
A hospital built with over 50 per cent local contributions should never have been handed to a company like NHS Property Services which charges the NHS extortionate rents. Morally it belongs to the local community.
If the NHS can’t use a whole wing of the hospital – a wing that was built 100 per cent by local donations – NHSPS should give it back to us, free of charge.
NO public consultation on the partial closure of Seaton Hospital
The Devon Integrated Care Board (ICB) have said that the ‘stakeholder engagement process’, on the proposal to hand back a wing of Seaton Hospital to NHS Property Services (potentially leading to its demolition) will NOT include a public consultation – although the wing was WHOLLY paid for by public donations, making the Seaton area community THE most important stakeholder.
Only this week the ICB released, at my request, its report on the proposal, which boasted about the original consultation process for the hospital beds closure in 2016. Presumably they’ve realised, as I reminded them in my letter this week, that the consultation showed people DIDN’T want the closure.
So – fearing the Seaton public would once again say no, they’ve simply cut us out altogether this time!
The entire cost of the ‘redundant’ hospital wing was raised by the Seaton public
I’ve gone back to Mary Wood’s splendid booklet on the history of Seaton Hospital (1991). While the original hospital opened in 1988 was paid for £1 to £1 by the League of Friends’ fundraising and the NHS, the ‘whole cost’ of the wing which the ICB now wants to declare redundant – potentially to demolish – was met by the League. The NHS only had to pay the running costs when it opened in 1990.
This makes it all the more outrageous that Seaton Hospital was placed in the ownership of NHS Property Services in 2016, and they could now bulldoze it. Morally the hospital, especially this wing, belongs to the community in Seaton, Colyton, Colyford, Beer, Axmouth and surrounding villages who raised the money to build it in the first place. The ICB, having shamefully failed to make proper use of it, should now hand it back free of charge.
Thanks to Ted Gosling, curator of Seaton Museum and the town’s only Freeman, who gave me this booklet back in 2017.
Chair of NHS board who wants to close part of our hospital ‘went into politics to oppose community hospital closure’
Dr Sarah Wollaston, the chair of the Devon Integrated Care Board (ICB) which is closing part of Seaton Hospital, is the former Conservative MP for Totnes who lost her seat after switching to the Lib Dems in 2019.
According to Wikipedia, she was ‘ spurred into politics by her opposition to the threatened closure of Moretonhampstead Community Hospital in 2006’.
The hospital is still open today: The Mid-Devon Advertiser (27 July 2006) reported:
‘Friends of the hospital, who raised £500,000 for its refurbishment in the 1990s, promised the trust ‘one hell of a fight’ if [the hospital was closed]. But now the trust has recognised the benefits brought about by new arrangements in which hospital staff and GPs work more closely together.
The hospital has also started to offer services such as blood transfusions which were previously only available at Exeter’s RD & E Hospital. None of the community hospital’s nine beds have been closed as they are proving cheaper than acute beds in general hospital and trust spokesman, Nick Pearson, said the future was looking bright.
“Offering more services locally is of benefit to local people and it’s also good for the local NHS economy as it provides better value,” he said.
Surely there is a lesson for the ICB here – look again at referring the Seaton wing to Property Services, bring in more services locally, and turn the hospital into a community health hub – or reopen the ward for aftercare and pandemic preparedness.
Thanks to Cllr John Heath for initial research.
The NHS must end its neglect of Seaton: my reply to the ICB’s report on the hospital
I have sent the following reply to the ICB over its report (which I reproduced in my last post). This reply has gone to our MP and I am sending it to the press.
Thank you for sharing the report, which I am making available locally. I cannot understand, however, why it was not published together with the Board’s minutes and that it has taken pressure from me and possibly others to produce it.
I appreciate that you are consulting with partner organisations but it is wholly unacceptable that you have still not outlined any plan to communicate this decision to, or consult with, the local community in Seaton, Colyton, Beer, Branscombe, Axmouth and surrounding areas which depend on this hospital, who contributed half of its original cost in the 1980s, and have helped to fund it ever since – overall donating some £5 million at current prices.
Perhaps unsurprisingly given the constant turnover of NHS organisations and leaders since 2017, the report provides a very incomplete and distorted account of the background. It states that the beds were removed ‘following full public consultation’ and notes the numbers of consultation events, responses to surveys and letters from the public. It fails however to mention that the consultation events in Seaton showed overwhelming opposition to the proposals; that the opposition to the closure of the beds in Seaton was greater than to any other closures; and that the local MP, town council and councillors of all parties were adamantly opposed.
The report also fails to mention that the CCG originally originally proposed to keep the beds in Seaton, the furthest of all the affected towns from an acute hospital, changing its mind at the last minute in March 2017 and switching the retained beds to Sidmouth. No plausible rationale was presented for this switch, so that the decision was widely perceived as a political fix because Sidmouth, unlike Seaton, was then in a marginal constituency. The report fails to mention that because of this, the decision was the subject of especially strong criticism at the Devon Health Scrutiny Committee, which rejected by only one vote a proposal to refer the decision and the wider plans to the Secretary of State.
It is particularly outrageous that the report provides no explanation for the scandalous failure of the ICB and its predecessors, together with the RD&E, to make proper use of the former ward over the last 6 years. If poor use has been made of taxpayers’ money, that is not only because NHS Property Services is charging outrageous rentals (could you clarify for that £300,000 p.a. really refers to this wing of the building alone?). It is also because you have failed to take the opportunity to improve local health provision, which is weaker than in many comparable areas of Devon, although Seaton has the most elderly population in the county (after Budleigh Salterton) and lower life expectancy than neighbouring towns like Sidmouth.
Not only has the NHS left Seaton with a lower level of services than any other community hospital in East Devon, but clinics have been allowed to be discontinued and proposals to introduce new services – like one to locate FORCE chemotherapy here which I myself made – were ignored. It is also very disappointing that the report claims that no viable proposals have been received for the use of the ward, ignoring the detailed, costed proposals for using the hospital made by Seaton Area Health Matters, chaired by Councillor Jack Rowland – a body which was set up with CCG and RD&E encouragement after the 2017 events, but in which you subsequently failed to maintain your interest.
I think I speak for a very large section of the local community when I say that it is essential that this decision becomes an opportunity to reverse the neglect of Seaton Hospital, rather than a confirmation of it, and that we expect the ICB itself to play a full part in putting the hospital on a better footing, not least to compensate the local community for your and your predecessors’ neglect over the last 6 years.
I trust that you will make this letter available to the Chair and other members of the Board. I have copied it to Richard Foord MP and Cllr Paul Arnott, Leader of East Devon District Council, and I shall be making it available to the press as well as locally.
