Your letters on mental health services, the new Queen Elizabeth Hospital in King’s Lynn, localism and a councillors’ surgery in Downham Market
Health and politics are discussed in the Lynn News letters page of Friday, February 28, 2025…
Why have they been removed from special measures?
Our members are incredulous that NHS England has removed our local mental health service provider, the Norfolk and Suffolk Foundation Trust, from special measures.
This monumental decision has been taken in advance of the CQC inspection of the Trust.
It appears that NHS England requires no independent evidence to justify its decision. So much for candour.
Our service users and carer members have seen no evidence of improvements in services.
Your readers will frequently have read of so many tragedies where people have lost their lives due to failings in their mental health care.
We regularly hear from our members that they have experienced unsafe discharges from services, endless waiting lists or have been unable to get a hospital bed when needed.
We consider that this decision is gaslighting the vulnerable and is detrimental to good mental health.
Another powerful organisation is telling us, the regular users of these services, without independent evidence, that services have improved.
As regular users of services, we have not witnessed these alleged improvements.
NHS England is telling us that we’re failing to see the Emperor’s new clothes.
We strongly consider that this is corporate coercive control.
Campaign to Save Mental Health Services in Norfolk and Suffolk
Enough waffle, let’s have some dates and facts
Does the chief executive of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Lynn really re-read her missives from The Ward Round column or refer to the ones from 12 or 24 months ago?
The same endless references to 'commitment' and 'determination' might have been seen once as positivity but frankly now sound tired and desperate.
We've even now endured feeble terms like 'bumps along the way' used to describe the complete and utter failure by hospital bigwigs, politicians of all hues and successive governments to take our crumbling and barely coping hospital seriously.
'Bumps' must be the understatement of the decade and frankly, unless someone levels with us soon and stops this prevarication and empty rhetoric our diminishing faith in any of them will reach rock bottom.
Please... enough of the waffle, let's have some dates and facts please Ms Webster... if there are any.
Steve Mackinder
Denver
Proposals for localism need turning round
I cannot understand why there is not more opposition to the proposed plans to dissolve West Norfolk Council. West Norfolk has an area of just over 550 square miles. That is more than a quarter of Norfolk and larger than some counties in the UK.
How local government of this locality is going to be improved by administration from Norwich or Suffolk is unclear.
Admittedly the dual representation by county and borough councillors creates some difficulties, but in general local problems get a more sympathetic response from the borough than county. Norwich is too far away to appreciate local priorities.
Flooding and drainage appear to be handled well by a particular type of localism, the drainage boards.
The wider view appears to be that some areas of fen will be left to flood and the local population deserve better than this proposal.
It has been reported that dredging of the middle level is being stopped due to insufficient funds.
Having served on drainage boards and as a school governor I cannot help but compare the two committees. Drainage boards provide all the relevant background information on different coloured paper for each category so that logical decisions can be made. The school governors that I joined suffered from a lack of such information and seemed to have a great deal of responsibility without any authority.
In one village, not in the fens, water flows rapidly from another area at about 120 feet above sea level to the village centre at 40 feet and therefore not covered by a drainage board. Many properties in the village regularly flood but self help has prevented water entering the houses.
The solution to the problem is a ditch to divert the incoming water but this is not considered a priority by county council because not enough domestic properties have flooded.
Many roads have been closed recently. A problem is that when a driver sees the ‘road closed’ sign, it does not often mention where the block is.
Some villages are brought to a standstill by cars parked by people visiting schools. In one village two local landowners have offered use of part of a nearby field for parking on condition that a Sebra or Pelican crossing is provided. The county highways representative’s response was: “ I see no danger.”
My point is that although certain organisations have to remain controlled by Westminster, much more local government could be done by local people.
These localism proposals need turning the other way round. Disband the top and give more power to lower tiers. Enhance the role of the parish and town councillor. The local people with the local knowledge are there.
Our capable and committed local borough and county councillors and our new member of parliament are good. They could, given some help, locally govern this area. They live here. It is unlikely a mayor of Norfolk and part of Suffolk will.
Geoff Hipperson
Shouldham
Surgery more like a surgical removal of my own tongue!
I was shopping at the Saturday market in Downham when I saw a stall which read 'Councillors’ Surgeries'. The principal was right but that is where it stopped.
Assuming accommodating access I tried to strike up a diplomatic conversation with two Labour members of a local council on pressing issues.
I politely suggested that the Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves is not having a good time. One of them replied: "She needs time to get her policies across,” to which I replied: "She didn't take much time in damaging the economy".
There was a condescending response and when I tried to talk about the Budget, they told me they couldn't understand what I was saying. Were they fobbing me off, going into denial or simply being clueless in evading my questions? Whatever, they had no interest in dialogue on mutual terms, or perhaps they wanted to talk about street lighting or potholes, rather than Rachel's Tory blackholes.
I reminded them that they were accountable to the electorate who pay for their allowances from council tax, but I was curtly blanked. I detected a microcosm of the PM's strategy of a one-way radio network of transmitting and not receiving.
I finally tried to raise the issue of pensioners losing their winter fuel allowances and they slope-shouldered, with one of them again saying: "I cannot understand what you are saying".
They call it a councillors’ surgery, more like a surgical operation to cut my tongue off. When I decided to depart, they were facially relieved, but I could understand what they were saying through body language.
This from a Labour Party which has a foreign secretary in Government who told parliament that Syria is next door to Libya. What a poor show and at a local level we had a poor one in the market as we all become poorer. It is small wonder Viewpoint has printed correspondence of mine criticising under-performing councils.
David Fleming
Downham
