Reader’s letter: Awaiting results

As a resident of Newark I attended the meeting at the YMCA, which was for residents to discuss with NHS trust members and others the availability of Newark Urgent Treatment Centre at Newark Hospital and, in particular, the times at which urgent care is a available.

Currently, care and treatment is available at the UTC from 9am until 10pm, however, we have heard from local people attending before 10pm that it had been closed and in one case a patient was informed that they did not accept patients after 9.30pm and was advised to seek treatment elsewhere.

Apparently, the NHS require urgent treatment centres to be available 12 hours each day and at the moment Newark UTC is open for 13 hours.

It is obvious that local residents see the need for longer opening hours because of the increase in population growth that will place increased demand on the local hospital services and the urgent treatment centre particularly.

NHS England has provided funds for the expantion of operating theatre services, etc, due to open shortly and this will mean an increase in the number of treatments within the hospital and much-needed increase in car parking facilities.

This is, indeed, good news and is most welcome.

What was not detailed was, did this influx of funds include the availability of staff to service the improvements.

Other meetings have taken place and the trust will meet at the end of October to study the feedback from these meetings.

It was it was pointed out by the Nottinghamshire county councillor at the meeting that the public’s opinion will also be on the agenda of the counncil’s heath scrutiny committee and the requested survey answers was indeed not a done deal.

I look forward to the results from the trust but it always comes back to the availability of finance and staff. — D. LANGFORD, Newark.