Dear Minister

Oral Questions in the House – 7th March 2006

I was most grateful to you for your kind and positive response to my question in the House last Tuesday. It is good of you to say that you will look at the problems that have arisen for the Amblescroft Unit at Fountain Way in Salisbury and the Greencroft Centre in Salisbury.

On Wednesday morning, 8th March, I heard your excellent interview on the Today programme after the 8 o’clock news. How right you were to draw attention to the sensible use of community nursing as a way of finding a better answer to the needs of patients without the expensive and probably inappropriate use of hospital facilities. However, the South Wiltshire Primary Care Trust has just closed the community nursing facility – without consultation with the General Practitioners. In fact they made representations to me about that only last Friday.

On top of that, this morning I received an e-mail from the Chairman of the Trustees of the Greencroft Centre in Salisbury conveying the decision to their NHS and County Council partners that they will close the Greencroft Centre on 30th April at the conclusion of the current contract. This, once again, is exactly the opposite of the solution you advocated in your very good answer to me in the House, recorded at column 716 of Hansard of 7th March 2006.

It is no exaggeration to say that NHS services for the most vulnerable people in Salisbury is now in crisis. Both I and Wiltshire County Council support your proposed reform of the PCTs to establish just one PCT for the county of Wiltshire. I hope that you will now pursue that with vigour and all due speed.

Yours sincerely