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Ealing Notes Latest figures show community care can't replace hospital beds Six years ago, plans by a body called Shaping a Health Future were put in place to downgrade Ealing and Charing Cross Hospitals to ‘local hospitals’, losing their A&Es and up to 600 beds. But first they would have to drastically cut the number of emergency admissions to North West London hospitals by 99,000 per year, supposedly by treating people in the community. So how well is this going? Not well at all, according to latest figures revealed by Freedom of Information requests. In the last 5 years, emergency admissions to Ealing Hospital increased from 33,000 to 34,000 and across North West London, they increased from 167,000 to 181,000. Demand for beds is now so great that NW London NHS bosses say no beds will be lost at Ealing and Charing Cross until at least 2023. None of this
though has stopped Ealing CCG from pressing ahead with their extremely risky tendering out of our community health services. Their 10 year, £1.3 bn contract is supposed to magically reduce emergency admissions by tens of thousands by ‘transforming’ community health care. More cuts seem inevitable. Likely contract winners - a consortium led by West London NHS Trust - are expected to deliver community health services within a budget so tight that two other NHS Trusts pulled out. These include London North West, who run Ealing Hospital and provide most community health services now. They thought they couldn’t deliver safe, quality services for the money.Ealing Save Our NHS will continue to oppose the rundown of services every step of the way. For more campaigning news from Ealing Save Our NHS please sign up for our newsletter at www.ealingsaveournhs.org.uk.
Pigeon Wars Shoppers at Sainsbury’s West Ealing may notice flocks of pigeons descending on an area adjacent to the store in Melbourne Avenue. A similar sight greets visitors to Dean Gardens. The unsightly droppings left also bring disease risks. This problem is recent and is the result of pigeons being fed on an industrial scale. Residents have pressed Councillors for action but the £10,000 the Council spent on landscaping the Melbourne Avenue area has failed
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to deter the pigeon feeders. Similarly, notices explaining that an Ealing by-law prohibits pigeon feeding are ignored or even obliterated by spray-painters. Cleaning the signs fails because they are swiftly resprayed! There are only two solutions. One is a drastic pigeon cull. The other is a pigeon feeder "cull", which would require CCTV cameras and prosecutions to succeed. More on: www.getwestlondon.co.uk /ealingpigeons
Putting the People of Ealing First
Compiled by J udy B reens
West Ealing Centre Neighbourhood Forum (WECNF) Sadly this has been wound up. Formed in 2013, the forum spent four years and over £30,000 of public money in creating a Neighbourhood Plan for West Ealing centre. In 2017, however, Ealing Council re-wrote the plan and then adopted this changed plan as its own.
