Seaton to aim for ‘refill town’, supporting campaign to cut plastic waste
On Monday Seaton Town Council supported my proposal to promote the spread of free water refilling facilities throughout the town, to prevent the proliferation of plastic bottles and the pollution they cause. I gather Seaton Jurassic already offers this facility and I hope other places in the town – and throughout the area – will consider joining in. The idea is explained by Refill Devon.
Seaton Town Council keeps precept (almost) on hold
This is old news now, but in the absence of the View From, readers may not have picked up that, on my proposal, the Town Council decided in January to hold its precept to an increase of 0.58 per cent, well under the rate of inflation (3 per cent).
Council Tax will still go up substantially, however, with big increases expected from DCC, EDDC and the Police and Crime Commissioner, reflecting yet more large cuts in Government funding which are stripping services to the bone.
CPRE Devon to produce report on housing needs, to help challenges to major development proposals
Gigaclear announce superfast broadband rollout by 2020 in Branscombe, Weston, Farway and Offwell – postcode checker available online
It is intended that work will start in Q3 of 2019 (Q4 in Offwell) and finish in 2020: Q1 Farway, Q2 Branscombe and Offwell, and Q4 (Weston). You can see the map and check your postcode HERE.
Although a Carillion company has been contracted for some of the work, Ian Thomas quotes statements suggesting that Carillion’s collapse will not affect the programme.
FORCE cancer charity funds chemotherapy first in Okehampton – this is exactly the kind of service we need in Seaton
Encouraging news – the RD&E and FORCE have agreed that the cancer charity will deliver chemotherapy to patients in Okehampton Community Hospital.
The RD&E press release also says ‘It is hoped that the service will also be offered at a third location in East Devon later this year.’
We have an active local fund-raising group for FORCE – I was at a well-attended coffee morning in Colyton Town Hall three months ago – and this is exactly the kind of service that we would benefit from in the wider Seaton area, with our elderly population. This is the kind of thing we need to discuss in the community conversation on health matters which will take place in March, and I very much hope FORCE will be able to come.
The press release adds:
The charity began funding a pilot outreach chemotherapy project at Tiverton Hospital in July. The feedback from patients and nursing staff has been so positive that it is being rolled out as quickly as possible in Okehampton.
The benefits to patients include:
- Treatment closer to home so less travelling time and expense
- Easier parking
- Quieter location and treatment area
- Reduced waiting time for treatment, both in Okehampton and Exeter
- Experienced oncology staff from the hospital to deliver treatment
- Access to additional FORCE services to support you and your family
Devon looking for care and support workers – new campaign
Go to http://www.devonlive.com/special-features/devon-looking-care-support-workers-1115792
34 per cent of children in Coly Valley, 24 per cent in Seaton, living in poverty says shocking new report
From devonlive – The End Child Poverty coalition has collated the data: altogether 251 children in the Coly Valley (34 per cent) and 232 in Seaton (24 per cent) are likely to be living in poverty. The figures are estimates of child poverty in different areas, calculated using HMRC data and the Labour Force Survey.
Sam Royston, Chair of End Child Poverty and Director of Policy and Research at the Children’s Society said: “It is scandalous that a child born in some parts of the UK now has a greater chance of growing up in poverty, than being in a family above the breadline.
He added, “There can be little doubt that the Government’s policy of maintaining the benefits freeze despite rising prices is a major contributor to the emerging child poverty crisis.”
Care at home – ‘When GPs ring the single point of access number asking for rapid response or night sitting, the carers are not available. This is partly due to lack of resources and partly due to difficulty with recruitment.’
Claire Wright’s blog gives the speech made by Dr Mike Slot at Health Scrutiny: “If community hospital beds was intended to be offset by increasing the capacity of community care so that patients could be cared for in their own homes. This may or may not have been realistic since many of the patients in the hospital system cannot be managed in the community even with excellent community services.
However, with or without community hospital beds it is an excellent idea to expand community services so that all those patients who can be cared for out of hospital can remain at home. Unfortunately there is not sufficient capacity in the home care services to do this job.
When GPs ring the single point of access number asking for rapid response or night sitting, the carers are not available. This is partly due to lack of resources and partly due to difficulty with recruitment. I suspect that part of the difficulty with recruitment may be due to the terms and conditions. If the carers only get paid if they are required then this may not be particularly attractive.
We understand that a hospital only functions well with a maximum of 85% bed occupancy, and similarly with the home care service we need to accept that there will be some unused capacity otherwise the service is never able to accept unexpected cases. Thus we need to allocate enough resource so that we can offer both an attractive rate of pay and attractive terms and conditions.
This is in fact an essential part of the answer to the problem the entire NHS is experiencing. If the level of water in a reservoir is steadily rising and then overflows, you can either try and build the banks higher in which case it will just overflow a bit later, or you can look at the streams going in and going out of it.
Similarly when you see an overflowing A&E or hospital you can buy more A&E or acute beds (very expensive) or you can increase community capacity to prevent people going in and facilitate people coming out (relatively much cheaper but you still have to pay a proper rate for it).”
Health Scrutiny hears there will be no precipitate decisions on community hospitals – local conversations with CCG and RD&E offer chance to shape ‘place-based health systems’ around towns
In my third and final report from yesterday’s Health Scrutiny, I come to the report on the future of the hospitals by NEW Devon CCG and NHS Property Services, in response to the Committee’s request for clarification. (This arose from my presentations at the September and November meetings). While NHS PS stressed that in principle they will eventually have to charge market rents, Claire Wright elicited the useful information that currently NHS England are still paying for the buildings, and the company said they are ‘always happy to work with local communities to consider local services’. Scrutiny’s resolution requested that NHS PS ‘uphold this undertaking’ and keeps the Committee informed on the timeline for changes in the status of the hospitals.
The CCG’s Sonja Manton confirmed that the community conversations the CCG and RD&E are now promoting to develop ‘place-based systems‘ around ‘market towns’ – which have already begun in Honiton and Okehampton – can certainly include the services people want to have delivered locally in the hospitals. While there are cost constraints and not everything which people want will necessarily be delivered, local communities can certainly discuss these services with the NHS organisations, as well as how voluntary organisations can help the NHS and adult social care. Okehampton’s Conservative county councillor, Kevin Ball (below front left, with Non-Aligned Group leader Frank Biederman behind), stressed the progress his community had made in the recent meeting in the town. He and Okehampton’s mayor, Jan Goffey, mentioned that FORCE Chemotherapy will soon be opening a service in the hospital.
In my speech (1:34:20) I welcomed the new ‘place-based’ focus and stressed the importance for towns like Seaton – which is 45 minutes to an hour from acute hospitals – of using the free space in the community hospital to deliver routine treatments and operations for which people currently have to go to Exeter. I pointed out that constituents complain to me all the time about the stress, strain and cost of repeated travelling, often when unwell, without parking, park-and-ride space or bus services – while Exeter complains of congestion!
I mentioned the request of the RD&E’s Em Wilkinson-Bryce, in Honiton last week, for the community to trust the NHS organisations, and said that a serious conversation about local services – in which the NHS takes on board what people want – would be the best way to create this. We wanted to keep the beds, but now they are gone proper ‘place-based’ strategies for each of our towns offer the prospect of working together with the NHS. Preparations are underway for a meeting similar to ‘Honiton’s Health Matters’ in Seaton in March, and I will give more information as soon as the date is fixed.
Seaton & Colyton MATTERS 