Lib Dems Launch Major Survey Of Local NHS Services

12.00.00am UTC (GMT +0000) Mon 20th Aug 2007

St Albans Liberal Democrats are launching one of the most comprehensive surveys ever undertaken of local health services. Over the next few weeks, every home in the St Albans constituency will receive a four-page questionnaire covering local GP services, local hospitals A&E and in-patient treatment, NHS Direct, dentistry, and the issues raised by the current hospital consultation in Hertfordshire which ends on October 1.

Sandy Walkington, Liberal Democrat parliamentary candidate for St Albans, said: "Over the last year, I have already highlighted local statistics on hospital hygiene and superbugs, kitchen hygiene and vermin in St Albans City Hospital, and the wretched state of staff morale in West Hertfordshire NHS.

"There are clearly many problems, but there will also be areas of excellence too. This survey will give us a huge amount of information which we will be able to analyse and feed back to local health managers.

"Few things matter more to everyone than the state of our local NHS. We are at our most vulnerable when we and our families have to use the health service. On a personal level I was once rushed into St Albans City Hospital to have my appendix removed - emergency surgery that doesn't happen there any more. My first child was born there - that also could not happen any more with the removal of maternity services.

"Of course there has to be change. But it should be change for the better. In spite of the billions of pounds of taxpayers' money that Tony Blair and Gordon Brown tipped into the NHS, things don't seem to be getting better here in Hertfordshire.

"They scrapped the proposed super-hospital at Hatfield - which would have been easily accessible from across the whole county and with all the benefit of being linked with the University of Hertfordshire. Our increasingly elderly local hospitals are to be patched together instead to limp into the 21st century. We need to be confident that the current shape of GP provision is capable of meeting new demands. Over everything hangs the threat of 100,000 new houses in Hertfordshire and all that might mean for local health service demand.

"Local views and experiences must be the best way of informing decisions for the future of Hertfordshire health services. We are hoping for a huge response to this initiative."

ENDS

For more information, please contact Sandy Walkington on 07802 177317