UK's flood defences 'inadequate', warn MPs

Britain could be at risk of a repeat of last summer's flood disaster because the money being spent on improving defences is "inadequate" - reports the Daily Telegraph today.

Ministers had claimed that the £800m earmarked for flood prevention by 2010-2011 (in contrast, equivalent to a mere
7 weeks of our net payments to the EU budget) would be enough.

But MPs on the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee (EFRA) have warned that the figure for government spending was "far less impressive under close analysis" and may be insufficient to deal with traditional and new flooding threats.

Last night the government announced £31m from the European Union's Solidarity Fund would be spent on the areas worst hit by the floods (not even two days worth of the NET amount we pay into the EU budget).

The floods in June and July last year, mainly in Yorkshire, Humberside and the Midlands were the worst for 60 years causing £3bn of damage and leaving 13 people dead.

A total of 44,600 homes and 7,100 businesses were flooded and thousands more people were left without power and water.

Nine months on the misery was still continuing for thousands who had not been able to return to their devastated homes.

So why is the government's professed commitment to prevent future flooding so miniscule in comparison to the funds it is prepared to lavish on the wasteful, audit-failing EU?

Are these the priorities we expect?

Hospital downgraded in NHS revamp

Health chiefs have revealed plans to downgrade Bridlington hospital so that it will no longer treat heart patients or medical emergencies - reports the BBC.

The site will become a community hospital under proposals announced by the Scarborough and North East Yorkshire Primary Care Trust (PCT).

Cardiac and acute patients will instead be treated at Hull or Scarborough.

Elsewhere in East Yorkshire, the NHS received news of a £20m funding boost, including a new hospital in Beverley.

However, this extra money - while welcome - is little more than a day's worth of money the government now pays into the EU's audit-failing budget at £115 million every single week.

The government investment will also fund a new healthcare facility in Hornsea and major refurbishment work at Driffield's Albert Bean Hospital.

So imagine what could be achieved with the equivalent of just one more day's payment to the EU, if our massive financial contribution to that audit-failing organisation were diverted instead to essential health services.

The investment is the largest single award in the latest wave of the Department of Health's £750m capital investment programme for community hospitals and services (NHS improvements being worth only six and a half weeks' worth of our payments to the EU, in the government's eyes).

On the future role of Bridlington Hospital, the Scarborough and North Yorkshire PCT said: "During the public consultation run by the trust earlier this year the support and passion for Bridlington Hospital was extremely well voiced by local people.

"Whilst recognising the level of public interest and concern...it would be neither prudent clinically, professionally nor financially to maintain services in their current format in the long term.

"Overall the number of patients served by both hospitals [Bridlington and Scarborough] is relatively small and having services duplicated across sites affects future sustainability of those services."

In September, health union officials warned that if the cardiac unit at Bridlington was closed, lives would be put at risk as patients would have to travel further for treatment.

Earlier this year, the trust revealed it intended to cut 600 jobs in an attempt to reduce its £20m deficit and cut costs.

But the losses were averted at the last minute after an agreement was reached between the trust and the strategic health authority to write off the debts.

At-risk Post Office outlets named

The Post Office has announced the first 180 branches earmarked for closure under government plans to shut 2,500 by the end of next year - reports the BBC.

The first closures are planned for post offices in Kent, East Yorks and the East Midlands and a six week consultation period has begun.

The government says cuts are needed as the current 14,000-strong network has been losing £4m a week.

However, the cuts are actually needed because the government is unwilling or unable to maintain subsidies to loss-making offices, on the basis of their service to the community - often its most vulernable members.

However they do appear willing and able to increase payments to the audit-failing EU's budget by 63% - many billions more a year than subsidising loss-making post offices would cost.

Consumer watchdog Postwatch said that the closures were bad news, but it accepted the government spin that the current network was "unsustainable" (without further subsidy).

The government decided in December that 2,500 closures were required and said at the time that it wanted to help the Post Office modernise, restore profitability in its main offices, invest in new products and look at innovative ways to deliver services.

On Tuesday, the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform said it would provide funding of "up to £1.7bn until 2011 to continue to support the network" and to enable the Post Office "to modernise and rationalise".

However the government has recently agreed to gift the EU far more - an extra £2.5bn every single year, despite 12 years of the EU failing its audit. Is this a demonstration of the right priorities?

MPs who vote to approve the obvious waste of the EU budget deal when it comes before Parliament in the next session will be to blame for these consequent shortfalls in funding for essential public services.

Bridlington: Axe falls on mental health wards

A mental health ward is to close at Bridlington Hospital within weeks, and a second could close in three years - reports the BBC.

The Humber Mental Health NHS Trust said it was planning to treat more patients in their homes.

Mick Pilling, who is leading a campaign to save the hospital, said it was "another nail in the coffin, another much-needed service gone."

Last November it emerged the hospital's maternity unit is to close as the local NHS trust tackles £7m of overspending.

Hospital bosses had said mothers-to-be in the town would be encouraged to opt for home births.

Now officials at the mental health trust, which runs the threatened Waters Ward in Bridlington, said home treatment for older patients would replace in-patient services.

They said the Waters Ward would close in the autumn, with beds transferring to Castle Hill Hospital at Cottingham, near Hull.

Officials said that either the Buckrose Ward at the hospital or Bartholomew House at Goole would also close, probably within three to five years.

Mr Pilling added: "Waters Ward will close in the autumn and be taken to Castle Hill by all accounts.

The mental health trust said some patients would eventually be treated at a new facility to be built in the East Riding.

The mental health trust is part of the bigger Scarborough and North East Yorkshire NHS Trust which earlier this month announced it was to axe 600 jobs - a third of its workforce - at two Yorkshire hospitals.

The trust, which runs hospitals in Scarborough and Bridlington, plans to close wards and reduce non-clinical support services to save £15m.

Union officials had said the cuts would have a "devastating" impact on patients.

The trust's chief executive, Iain McInnes, said the trust needed to work "more efficiently, with fewer positions".

Yorkshire: Cut is “severe blow” to police cover

The chairman of Humberside Police Authority has described a Home Office refusal to reinstate funding for Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs) as a "severe blow" to neighbourhood policing – reports the Yorkshire Post.

Cllr Graham Stroud and Chief Constable Tim Hollis wrote a joint letter to Ministers asking them to reconsider a decision to withdraw funding for PCSOs announced in December.

Cllr Stroud said: "We had the courage to advance our recruitment of PCSOs, fully believing the government would honour its commitment to help us fund our programme.

"Now we are left in a very difficult position. The unprecedented pressure on police budgets is so severe that it is unlikely that we will even be in a standstill position … this could also mean that police officer numbers will be put seriously at risk."

Recruitment of PCSOs had been a major strand of Labour’s 2005 General Election manifesto.

But the U-turn on the second phase of the programme is likely to leave Yorkshire with 600 fewer PCSOs by 2008 than voters were promised.

Sadly the money to pay for these PCSOs and much more besides was promised in December 2005 to the European Union instead. An extra £2.5bn a year was awarded to the EU by Tony Blair despite auditors having been unable to tell us how the EU has spent the tens of billions of pounds of public money it has already received over the last twelve years.

Policing is just one of many public services which are now set to suffer.

North Yorks: Furious GPs attack health chiefs over ‘panic’ cuts

Health chiefs are ordering swingeing cuts in health services serving 750,000 people in Yorkshire in a "panic" attempt to tackle a dramatically-worsening financial crisis – reports the Yorkshire Post.

Sick patients referred to hospital could be sent back home, injured casualties turned away from A&E and people forced to endure waits of up to 16 weeks for operations under plans drawn up by NHS managers in North Yorkshire.

Last night family doctors claimed the emergency package was a "panic measure" in the face of urgent demands from Ministers to make savings, and warned patient care would suffer.

North Yorkshire’s newly formed Primary Care Trust (PCT) had faced a deficit of £24m in 2006-07 but officials now believe the cash crisis has significantly worsened and it could run up debts of £45m unless action is taken.

Measures being put in place are:

• New assessments of emergency admissions to hospitals in Scarborough, Northallerton and York;
  
• About half of patients in A&E being told to seek alternative help from walk-in centres, minor injury units and GPs;
  
• The imposition of minimum waits of 12 to 16 weeks for patients requiring routine surgery and 8 weeks for outpatients;
  
• The suspension of a range of treatments including joint injections, a ban on some investigative procedures and curbs on IVF treatment;
  
• A ban on some drug treatments and non-essential follow-up hospital appointments.

John Givans, secretary of North Yorkshire Local Medical Committee which represents GPs said they were "horrified" at the package.

He said: "This will undoubtedly cause patients to suffer increased pain and I can see all sorts of risks associated with it.

"The whole thing is a panic measure as a result of pressure from the government."

Cllr Sue Galloway, executive member for adult social services on Lib Dem-run York Council said: "It’s no use passing the buck because local authorities are cash-strapped as well. Already our services are over-stretched and we just cannot take people on. People are going to be in really, really desperate straits."

Selby Labour MP John Grogan said: "My fear is that unless a grip is got on the financial situation, the next step would be to propose very significant bed and job cuts, which would be completely unacceptable."

In a letter to health chiefs, chief executive of the troubled PCT Janet Soo-Chung said: "We fully appreciate the difficulties that the introduction of these measures entail. However, the financial position of the PCT is such that there is absolutely no alternative programme if we are to avoid even more difficult decisions in the near future."

Of course, one alternative would be for the government to stop wasting vast sums by sending it to the European Union, and bail out troubled PCTs like this one with a tiny fraction of the money that would be saved.

Sadly the government cares more about propping up the wasteful and fraud-ridden EU than it does about preventing these hospital cuts.

If Selby MP John Grogan votes to hand the extra £2.5bn a year Tony Blair has gifted the EU when it comes before Parliament, unfortunately the same will have to be said about him.

That’s unlikely to go down well with voters come the next election.

- Article contributed by: B.S., Hull

Yorkshire: NHS facing more pain after dental fees blunder

Cash-stricken NHS trusts in Yorkshire face another blow amid fears a government blunder in calculating controversial dental charges will leave a multi-million black hole in budgets.

A survey by the Yorkshire Post has found health chiefs in the region are predicting losses of up to £11m in revenue from the new dental charges introduced in April.

The huge shortfalls are being felt across England.

If the same pattern were to be repeated nationwide it could leave the NHS facing a dental charge deficit of more than £100m in 2006-07 – on top of an escalating crisis in health service finances which is already leading to big cuts in care.

Last night dentists’ leaders warned the shortfall could be made up in future years by big increases in dental charges.

The total loss in Yorkshire is predicted to be £10.9m, although the figure excludes East Riding.

The biggest predicted deficit is in the Bradford district, where health chiefs estimate they will be £2.4m below target by March.

Sheffield primary care trust (PCT) could run up losses of £2m.

The losses are exacerbating the NHS financial crisis. In latest estimates, NHS trusts in Yorkshire are predicting they will plunge £129m into the red by the end of March.

Scarborough dentist John Renshaw warned there were dangers charges would go up. He said: "If PCTs are not getting this money, then it’s going to hit them big time when they’re already in trouble.

"You can see what will happen. Charges will go up to make up the shortfall and the trouble is it’s already fairly expensive to get treatment on the NHS.

"It will cause further damage to services in the future as it will get more difficult to get affordable care under the NHS."