Labour Protests Weston A&E Closure

Weston Labour Party are calling on comrades across the South West for help in their campaign to protest A&E Closure in their town. A statement today read  “Bridgwater, Wells ,North Somerset, and of all Constituencies fighting the cuts to our NHS imposed by this Conservative Government. What happens to one of us today will surely happen to another tomorrow.”

Weston General Hospital A&E Overnight Closure

The statement continued “As you must be aware we have lost our A&E provision at Weston General Hospital between 10pm and 8am. Though the announcement carried the term ‘temporary’ we have it from a significantly reliable source that it will be closed overnight for at least a year and that the A&E model will be restructured before it is reopened with a different type of provision. This affects all constituencies relying on Weston General Hospital directly. It affects other constituencies indirectly. Bristol and Taunton for example will take the extra load in their already understaffed hospitals leading to longer queues and exhausted staff. The knock on effect has our service suffering a domino effect across the region and across the country with each area hospital placing extra load on their neighbours. “

Ambulance Service hit

“Our ambulance service similarly and concurrently has had a reduction in their overnight provision and we currently have 2 ambulances to serve our region between 10pm and 8am. Given that we also have a large elderly population and a huge surge of population via tourism in the summer this all seems to make no sense – unless it’s part of the privatisation plans which involve grinding down our hospitals until they can’t cope, thus making them ripe for corporate takeover.

We have been fighting it with petition and protest and we have tried to get the Sustainability and Transformation Plan for our Area Health Authority rejected by our Tory North Somerset Council.

All to no avail.

Suspiciously the overnight closure with only a few weeks warning was not announced until after the General Election, where all our constituencies returned Tory MPs. 

Jeremy Hunt visited our hospital in secret a couple of weeks ago. Why? “

Autumn Campaign

Weston Labour Party has several activities lined up  in early September to protest this closure.

September 2nd – 10am – 2.30pm. They plan to petition for the re-opening of Weston General A&E overnight service in Weston town centre, based at their gazebo.

September 4th – 8.30pm. They will hold a candlelit vigil outside Weston General Hospital to commemorate 2 months of Closure. This will happen every month until they have overnight provision reinstated.

September 5th – 9am. They will hold a protest outside Weston General Hospital because the Trust Board members turn up for their 10am meeting.

There are also plans to hold public meetings during September and October .

Annie Higgs, Secretary, Weston-super-Mare CLP said “I’m giving you this information on behalf of our CLP because you are also affected and we want you to come and join us in our actions. Can you please let your members, friends and neighbours know that every person who joins us is welcome. We need all the people, members and none members we can muster to fight this.  We have to let the people of our constituencies know what’s happening to their NHS provision. Thank you in advance for your support.”