Ilford South Labour Party

Monday March 8th is the deadline for the public consultation on the health authorities proposals for North East London, including the closure of Accident & Emergency and other services at King George Hospital.

What can you do NOW?

1. Take part in the consultation, which runs until March 8 2010. Fill in the questionnaire on the Website www.healthfornel.nhs.uk.

2. Write in protest to Freepost RSAE RCET ATJY, Health for North East London, Harrow, HA1 2QG.

3. Call them with your views on 0808 238 5416 ( it is a free line).

4. Sign Mike Gapes M.P’s new petition on line at www.savekinggeorgehospital.org.uk or by requesting forms from his Constituency Office at 6 Mildmay Road, Ilford, Essex, IG1 1DT, Tel: 020 8911 0899. Forms need to be returned by Monday 8th March.

5. If you can manage it, we are encouraging everyone to ask for some forms and get their friends and neighbours to sign. Just remember we need them back by March 8th

Despite poor weather on 13th. February hundreds of supporters of the campaign to keep King George Hospital turned out to march from the Hospital to the Town Hall.
Ilford South Labour Party members were prominent on the march and the overall organiser Andy Walker is a member of Seven Kings Branch Labour Party.

At the Town Hall there were speeches from local M.P’s including our own Mike Gapes and Margaret Hodge from Barking.

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Among our photos here we see Mike Gapes M.P. at the start of the march, crowds outside the Town Hall, Cllr Stuart Bellwood and Aziz Choudhry Labour candidate for Valentines in the May  council elections in demonstrating mood, and Cllr Javed with Ilford South Labour Party Chair Helen Coomb and her sister Catherine on the march.

The Campaign goes on with another rally planned for 17 April. This time the idea is to get the local faith groups, who have all been keen supporters of the hospital to take the lead. Andy Walker is again the Organiser, watch out for more details.

In the meantime remember to sign Mike’s petition on his website, or if you want to  get your friends and neighbours to sign, ask for paper copies ( phone 020 8911 0899) and return them to Mike’s Constituency Office at: 6 Mildmay Road, Ilford, Essex, IG1 1DT.

Also remember you have until 8 March to participate in the consultation on health services in North East London. Go to www.healthfornel.nhs.uk or use the freephone 0808 238 5416.

The photograph shows Ilford South Labour Party members, with their M.P Mike Gapes, just before they presented the petition with 28,000 signatures demanding that King George Hospital be saved in 2007.

Our 2007 Campaign was successful. Now the regional health service management have returned to this ridiculous proposal. They have issued ‘Health for North East London’ a consultation document which in their view is the route to ‘delivering high quality hospital health services for the people of north east London’. What appears again is the downgrading of King George Hospital, closure of the A&E and closure of the maternity unit.

4 years ago Lord Ara Darzi was commissioned by the Government to look into the future of healthcare in London. His initial proposals envisaged local hospitals serving a population of between 200,000 and 250,000 proposals. Under these proposals, from our health service managers, Redbridge plus Barking and Dagenham with an expanding population, currently of 446,000 will be deprived of a local hospital.

Already Redbridge Council has rejected the proposals at its Health Scrutiny Committee and voted to ‘refer the issue to the Secretary of State for Health requesting that he establish an independent review of these proposals…’

What can you do?

1. Take part in the consultation, which runs until March 8 2010. Fill in the questionnaire on the Website www.healthfornel.nhs.uk.

2. Write in protest to Freepost RSAE RCET ATJY, Health for North East London, Harrow, HA1 2QG.

3. Call them with your views on 0808 238 5416 ( it is a free line).

4. Sign Mike Gapes M.P’s new petition on line at www.savekinggeorgehospital.org.uk or by requesting forms from his Constituency Office at 6 Mildmay Road, Ilford, Essex, IG1 1DT, Tel: 020 8911 0899.

5. If you can manage it, we are encouraging everyone to ask for some forms and get their friends and neighbours to sign. Just remember we need them back by March 8th

6. JOIN THE MARCH AND RALLY. Meet outside King George Hospital on Barley Lane at 1.15 p.m. on Saturday 13 February 2010. March to the Town Hall in Ilford High Road where you will hear Mike Gapes M.P (Ilford South), Lee Scott M.P. ( Ilford North) and Chris Carter (Editor of the Ilford Recorder) speak against the proposals from the Town Hall steps.

Read Mike Gapes full speech in Parliament on this subject, go to www.mikegapes.org.uk

What was life like with the Conservatives?

“In March 1991 over 50,000 patients were waiting 2 years or more to go into hospital… For hip or knee replacements and cataract operations, a waiting time guarantee of 18 months has already been established… From April 1995, the NHS is broadening this 18-month guarantee to cover all admissions to hospital.”
NHS Patient’s Charter, 1995

How things have changed under Labour!

“By December 2008, the longest you will wait after being referred by your GP until you start your treatment will be 18 weeks - that is, unless it is clinically appropriate to wait longer, or you choose to delay treatment. Wherever possible you will wait less than this. Any hospital appointments, tests, scans or other procedures that you may need before being treated will all happen within this maximum time limit.”
http://www.18weeks.nhs.uk

Seven Kings and Goodmayes Allotment gardeners now believe they have finally won their fight to save much loved allotments form sale, helped by local residents and similarly threatened allotment gardeners in Hainault. Goodmayes Labour Councillors and Labour Deputy Leader, Cllr Bob Littlewood, were involved early in helping allotment gardeners.

The battle began early in 2007 when Redbridge Council Cabinet voted to sell off Vicarage Lane South and Goodmayes Lane allotments. They decided in secret, with the public unable to attend or even find out that plot sales were on the agenda. Councillors were forbidden to talk about sales, yet according to Alan Weinburg, Council Leader, the decision was not a secret!

The sale move was doubly cynical as Redbridge had recently announced a “consultation” on the future of allotments. As one gardener said “it’s difficult to call it a consultation when a key decision has already been made” . Sale plans also threatened other open space with allotment holders to be displaced into Goodmayes Park extension.

They were soon joined by North Hainault Allotment Holders Society, also threatened with the sale of two flourishing sites. Sites were chosen solely because they were easy to develop. Two sites were fully occupied and the others nearly full.

When they found out allotment gardeners went to war. They protested outside Town Hall meetings joined by Labour Party members, spoke at Council, Cabinet and Scrutiy Committees and publicised their case in the local papers, radio and the national press. Their fight was even mentioned in the book “One man and his dig” by Times journalist Valentine Low.

They lobbied their Area Committees and were rewarded by a split in the Conservative ranks. Several Conservative councillors were concerned by the potential loss of open space and the risk of overdevelopment.

They could also have considered that selling four allotment sites run by voluntary groups flew in the face of a national Conservative policy that claims to support voluntary groups. Not so in Redbridge. The only Council run site, Chigwell Road, was withdrawn from sale when local residents objected en masse and it was conveniently discovered that the site was in a flood risk area.

Selling allotments also flies in the face of the growing national popularity of allotments. Ironically the voluntary sector let sites are much better occupied than the Council’s own sites so it looks as if the Council wanted to penalise voluntary success.

Most allotment gardeners are not terribly political. For many it was their first visit to a Council meeting. They went away appalled at the cynical way they were treated by Redbridge Conservatives.

Labour Government provides funds for free swimming for children & older people but Tory council closes our pools

Many Labour Party members yesterday joined other members of the public on a march from the offices of the Ilford Recorder to the Town Centre. They were there to protest at the sudden closure of the High Road Swimming Pools, one of only two public baths in the borough.

The building had been condemned by structural engineers and had to close on grounds of safety. But the Tory administration in Redbridge has known there have been grave concerns regarding the building for many years. They have failed to fund necessary maintenance over many years. Plans to provide new facilities in Ilford became bogged down in factional in-fighting amongst the Conservatives. Some Tory councillors promised grandiose schemes, which couldn’t be funded, in a bid to win prestige and leadership in the Conservative group. This simply stopped more practical schemes going ahead and has resulted in the loss of huge financial support from the government for a new pool.

As a result of this shambles swimmers in Ilford and the south of the borough now have to travel to an overcrowded pool at Fulwell Cross, or out of the borough altogether. Swimming clubs and groups which used the High Road pools will not easily be accommodated, nor will those who were receiving swimming lessons.

All this comes at a time when our Labour government is providing funds to enable local councils to provide free swimming for those under the age of 16 or over 6o. But while children & older people in neighbouring boroughs benefit, there is nowhere to go for swimmers in Ilford.

Mike Gapes MP, Labour councillors & party members at the rally
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Barbara White was at the forefront of the successful campaign to Save King George hospital and now she is campaigning for better health services in the community. Barbara says

“Thanks to Labour there is much more investment in our health service locally and nationally. The new state of the art Loxford Health Centre will open next year. I am pleased that four more health centres/polyclinics are planned for our borough including one at Gants Hill.”

This additional investment means extra capacity including x-ray and diagnostic facilities in the community - more GPs, nurses and other healthcare professionals, more appointments, and longer and more convenient opening hours from 8am-8pm, 7 days a week.

The national Tories would reverse the agreement Labour has secured for evening and weekend GP opening hours. Now local Tories are running a scaremongering campaign opposing local health centres. There can be only one conclusion: Tory medicine makes you sick.

Mike Gapes, MP for Ilford South, talks about local health services, housing, transport and the elections for the London Mayor and the Greater London Authority.

“On Friday morning there was the regular meeting of local MPs with NHS managers. I was shocked to discover that the deficit at the Barking, Havering and Redbridge Acute Hospitals trust has now grown to a massive £39.9 million for this financial year. A huge part of this is as a result of the costs of the Romford Queens Hospital PFI and even more is due to the North East London Independent Treatment Centre.

Both the top managers have now left the trust and the new Chairman Eric Nath and Interim Chief Executive John Goulston will in my view need several years to turn things round. There must be no quick fix solutions based on cuts to services in Ilford.

I pressed Primary Care Trust Chief Executive Heather O’Meara who will report on Out of Hospital services for London region NHS early next year for an assurance that “Fit for the Future” is dead and that the crazy option four will not be reintroduced under another name. I was told that it has beeen “stood down”. That is not sufficient. There must be a clear public statement that Option four is permanently off the table and will not be brought back. I will continue to fight for the interests of my constituents. I will only accept changes which improve their access and the quality of their health care. Ilford needs and deserves a local hospital. I will fight tooth and nail any attempt to sacrifice King George Hospital on the altar of problems caused by incompetent management and escalating costs of running Queens Hospital or the ISTC.”

Mike Gapes MP and a group of supporters today deliver his petition to Save King George Hospital to Ruth Carnall, Chief Executive of London Region NHS.

The petition, launched at Christmas has now got a magnificent 25202 signatures from local residents. Mike also provided Ms Carnall with a letter setting out the detailed case against the closure and argued strongly to keep both an Accident and Emergency Department and a wide range of facilities for planned elective operations at our local King George Hospital.
To read the full text of the letter, please visit Mike’s own website at http://www.mikegapes.org.uk/?p=91#more-91