Week 47.08

                            Tendring Topics …..on Line

 

'Worse than being in jail?'

 

            I was shocked when I saw the headline Life on estate is 'worse than jail' on the front page of the Clacton Gazette and discovered that it referred to Clacton's Percy King Estate. 

 

            When I was the town's Housing Manager, admittedly 35 years ago, the Percy King had been Clacton's pride and joy.  It was relatively new and still developing.  Long-standing tenants from other of our estates begged to be transferred there. When the council was trying to entice a large firm from another district to our area, the Percy King was the estate on which their 'key workers' wanted to be housed.

 

            A few years later when I was Tendring's Public Relations Officer, we had a visitor from Virginia, USA.  He was involved with local government over there and was keen to learn all about local administration in this country.  I escorted him to Council and Committee meetings and drove him round the district, showing him our holiday beaches, the tree planting programme that we had at that time, and the Percy King Housing Estate.

 

            He was deeply admiring of everything that I showed him.   He felt that our councillors were much more altruistic than theirs and that our council housing estates and, in particular, the Percy King Estate were vastly superior to what he called their 'public housing'.  He admired the small and generally well-kept gardens, the neatly curtained windows and (I can hardly believe this was true, but it was in those days) the relative absence of litter and the general tidiness of the still-developing estate.

 

            All this, of course, was before the 'right to buy' legislation.  Tendring Council at that time, like the Clacton Council before it, was Conservative controlled but did not sell its council houses.  These it was felt were held in trust, having been bequeathed by earlier generations of councillors who had acted to eliminate homelessness, overcrowding, and substandard housing in the area.  It was the duty of each successive generation to conserve and add to the housing stock created by its forefathers.

 

            Right-to-buy and the chimera of 'home ownership for all' changed all that.  Everyone aspired to becoming a homeowner.  Councils were compelled to sell off their inheritance at a fraction of its real value, robbing the community of a valuable asset.

 

 The better council houses were snapped up by their tenants at bargain-basement prices.  The less attractive houses and the blocks of flats remained in council control; the poorer and less advantaged tenants remained in them.  It is hardly surprising that they began to deteriorate, as it seems the Percy King Estate has done.

           

            I find it sad that a publicly-owned housing estate, of which we once had reason to be proud, should have descended into the condition so graphically described to me by that visitor from Virginia some thirty years ago.

……………………………………………

 

                                     The NHS responds

 

            Regular readers of this blog may recall that I had problems with the follow-up on both the operation for my cataract and those on my ear earlier this year.   The follow-up visit after my cataract had been dealt with was promised to be at Clacton Hospital six weeks after the operation.  In fact it took place in Colchester eight or nine weeks after the op. and then only after I had phoned and asked for an urgent appointment because of a sight problem that I was still experiencing.

 

            After my second ear operation I was told to report to my own doctor's practice nurse a fortnight after the operation to have the stitches removed.  When I did this I was informed that she didn't remove stitches and that I would have to go to the minor injuries department of Clacton Hospital to have this done.   I duly turned up at the minor injuries department at 9.00 a.m. to be told that they removed stitches only between 2.00 p.m. and 3.30 p.m.   Luckily for me the nurse heard my conversation with the receptionist and, as she wasn't busy, removed the stitches there and then.

 

            I felt that other octogenarians in a similar position might not have been able to cope as well as I did.  I therefore wrote a polite emailed letter to the Hospital Authorities explaining the circumstances and saying that I had been very pleased indeed with the treatment that I had received both with my eye and my ear but that I felt that communication between the Hospital and the 'outside world' was a good deal less than perfect.

 

            I had hardly expected to hear another word from them but I have received an equally courteous email that made it clear that my comments had been thoroughly investigated and dealt with. I think it unlikely that any other patient will have to suffer the same inconvenience that I did. You may like to read their emailed reply:

 

Hello Mr Hall,

 

 I was asked to investigate the issues you raised in your email dated 31st October regarding your ophthalmology follow-up and suture removal. I have discussed the points you have raised with the managers for each of the areas and they have reported the following to me:

Ophthalmology follow-up - All patients requiring a follow-up appointment are registered on the electronic booking system as well as the timeframes the surgeon has requested for the patient to be followed up in. All departments are informed on a weekly basis the outstanding number of appointments to be booked to enable them to identify the number of clinics that need to be planned. This normally works well, however ophthalmology have been experiencing difficulties in providing sufficient clinic appointments as there has been a reduction in the number of doctors. One doctor has retired and another has left. The ophthalmology department are advertising vacant posts and have approached medical agencies for locum doctors however this has been unsuccessful. The clinics in Clacton Hospital have not ceased completely, however they have been reduced due to the reduction in the number of doctors available to do clinics. Patients are experiencing a delay on average of about 4 weeks. Patients should be informed of the delay at the time of leaving the department and advised that if they are experiencing any complications or deterioration in their condition they should contact their GP direct for review and fast track referral to the hospital if required. It is obvious from your email that this information is not being communicated. I have therefore spoken to the nurse manager within ophthalmology to ensure that this process is put in place.

Post-operative suture removal - The nurse who discharged you from the day unit did not normally work in this department and there was no system in place to ensure that temporary staff were giving the correct information regarding suture removal to patients. All the regular ward nurses are aware that any Tendring patient should automatically get asked to attend Clacton Hospital Mon - Fri 2-3.30. Patients are normally issued with a district nurse form with an additional note stapled to it, which gives the opening times of the dressings clinic and contact number. In order to avoid this happening again, a prompting card has been put in place to aid any bank nurses with this task.

I am very sorry you have been inconvenienced, bad enough once, but to have happened twice, is very disheartening for you and the Trust staff striving to provide a first class service. I am very grateful you have taken the time to bring these issues to my attention and enabled me to rectify two administrative errors.

Kind regards
Linda Moncur                                                                                             
Service Manager Ambulatory Care
Colchester Hospital University Foundation Trust

            The above, I think, demonstrates that politely drawing attention to any aspect of NHS service that you feel is below standard is well worthwhile.

…………………………………………

Essex County Council Ltd?

            Essex County Council sometimes gives the impression of being not only geographically remote from us but at least equally remote from common sense.  I think, for instance, of their selling off their old people's care homes, sending some of their members expensively half way round the world to undertake public relations jobs for Essex commercial enterprises that Essex commercial enterprise should be well able to undertake for itself, and distributing circulars to us informing us that we will be receiving another circular from them!  Against such decisions as these I try to balance the occasional sensible and enlightened one like taking over post offices which if left to commercial interests would have been closed, leaving whole communities without an essential public service.

            Their latest exploit (carried out it seems by the ruling political party without bothering to inform opposition members) is to attempt the privatisation of virtually the whole of the County Council's services.  They have offered on the internet an eight year contract worth up to £5.4 billion pounds for, in the first instance, privatising their 'back office' functions. However core services like libraries and education would also be covered by the contract and no limits have been set on what can be considered.   Hardly surprisingly the opposition, when they discovered from the press what was going on, warned that the proposed sell-out would jeopardise 39,000 jobs and compromise the decision-making power of councillors.

            I find the timing of this initiative even more astonishing than its content.   I would have thought that events over the past year had conclusively demolished the myth that anything that is done by a public authority can be performed better, more efficiently and more economically by private enterprise.  Remember the giant international corporation that took over the marking of all those school examination papers; and failed to deliver.  I believe that there are schools that, to this day, have not received their exam results.  Just this week we have heard that the private company awarded the contract for making sure that the least-well-off university students received their grants had failed to do so. They have had the contract taken away from them.  That doesn't help those impecunious students who are nearing the end of their first term without having received a penny.   It may well be that a substantial number have already dropped out.

            Then there's the credit crunch, largely the result of thoroughly irresponsible lending by high-flying entrepreneurs in the field of banking. These justify their astronomical salaries and bonuses by their brilliant financial acumen and their being prepared to take risks. They're not as clever as they thought and we tend to overlook the fact that the risks that they take are usually with our money.   I doubt if over Christmas many of them will be without a roof over their heads and wondering where the next meal is coming from.

            Even President George Bush, the arch-apostle of the global market and of untrammelled free enterprise, has had to pump millions of dollars (American tax-payers' money!) into failing commercial and industrial enterprises in an attempt to keep them afloat. 

            We in Essex may at least be thankful that it won't be long before there's a County Council election.  I hope that every eligible voter will make sure that his or her name is on the electoral register.

……………………………………