Hywel Dda Health Board's consultation fiasco!

By Tony Flatley, SOSPPAN Secretary.

I attended the Hywel Dda consultation fiasco yesterday along with other committee members and it quickly became farcical from what we were hearing.

ORS’s (Opinion Research Services) Dale Hall gave a presentation that was full of holes and it’s my opinion that all of the research he has carried out has been flawed and leaning greatly towards Hywel Dda.

Where was this firm’s and their spokesman’s integrity and impartiality?

The largest petition ever handed into the assembly some 24.000 along with one by Plaid Cymru of 9.000 were excluded and when asked it was outside the time frame.

There was no mention of time frames!!

It wasn’t handed into the insignificant little research firm ORS ….Oh we forgot to mention it should have been. But we have had to exclude it….why…because it would have blown ORS research out of the water.

When Trevor Purt chief executive (I refuse to use capitals in his useless title) was called before the Welsh Assembly Petitions Committee to explain why so many people were against them this automatically became part of the consolation investigation.

Why didn’t five votes of no confidence against this health board get taken into consideration of which three came from town councils?

We have read through these consolation documents from the beginning and at no time have they mentioned that this is being run in accordance with Gunning Principles of Consultation.

Yesterday Dale Hall and board members couldn’t use it enough which slams of them pre-empting any action taken against them.

May I remind them these principles should be followed from the beginning not 2 weeks from the end. So please don’t try to make documents fit this now as we shall be checking through them for alterations.

The whole process has been a sham and its been proved that this health board who where almost all involved in the changes made at Rochdale messed up big time with what they did there.

They virtually closed Rochdale and then came down here to form Hywel Dda.

The Daily Mirror reported last month that the changes made at Rochdale have been a failure and a bill of £500.000, yes half a million, has had to be spent on taxis to ferry people to other hospitals for appointments and 720 are likely to lose their jobs.

BUT THEY ARE DOING THE SAME HERE OVER GREATER DISTANCES !!!