Whittington Public Meeting TOMORROW– please come along
Posted by Lynne Featherstone, MP for Hornsey and Wood Green, at 13:36, Wed 3 March 2010:
Dear Neighbour,
Tomorrow, Thursday March 4, I have arranged a public meeting where local residents will get the chance to hear first hand what the NHS bosses have to say about the threat to the A&E at the Whittington Hospital. To represent the NHS, I have invited Rachel Tyndall, Chair of the North Central London (NCL) Review Panel, the body that has put forward the proposals to close the Whittington A&E, and Richard Sumray; Chair of Haringey Primary Care Trust.
This will also be an opportunity for you to ask questions – directly to the powers that be! And I want you to be there! If we can show just how strong local feelings are about this threat, I think we might have a chance of stopping them.
So please come along to the assembly hall, Greig City Academy, Hornsey for 8 pm. To access the assembly hall you need to use the Hillfield Avenue entrance which can be found 200 meters up Hillfield Avenue from Hornsey High Street, on the right hand side.
I've also put the meeting on Facebook as an event - http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=337137780950 - so if you use Facebook, please respond there and help spread the word by inviting your friends who live in the area too.
Following the petitions, the march and demo and the early meetings on the Whittington, we now have the NHS Strategy Document – so we now know from this latest document that there are seven draft 'options' for the future of the Whittington. Four out of the seven show an end to 24/7 A&E at the Whittington. This is still deeply worrying – though there has been some progress since the first leaked letter from Rachel Tyndall to the CEOs and Medical Directors of the relevant hospitals which had four options, all of which completely axed A&E at the Whittington.
This letter was withdrawn after the first round of outcry, but it leaves an underlying concern that the Whittington is on the hit list and that however long and complicated the document supporting the now draft seven options is – that early letter showed which way the thinking was going.
The meeting is your chance to ask questions directly to the NHS bosses, and demand clarification on what the plans really are. The general NHS line ‘nothing has been decided’ doesn’t mean that we can’t demand clarification on how the decisions are to be made. What are the criteria? Will we, who use the Whittington and cannot believe the madness of the proposed closure, have any real power in that consultation?
No-one voted for this. It was never in the Labour manifesto. The Labour Minister in answer to my many questions says ‘it is a local matter’. And yet – these quango servants to the Government hold our health in their hands – and they are not accountable to us.
They must be stopped. This is our life, our health, our NHS!
So please come along tomorrow. If you have any questions about how to get to Greig City Academy, or if you need special access, for instance disabled parking and access, please call the office on 020 8340 5459 or reply to this email.
Hope to see you there!
Kind regards,
Lynne MP for Hornsey & Wood Green (Lib Dem) (020) 8340 5459 lynne@lynnefeatherstone.org
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