MIDDLE England is revolting. On the mean streets of Haywards Heath, Banbury and Ludlow, respectable people are venting their spleens. And the cause of their anger? The NHS, or rather cuts to the NHS.
Health Service Journal (Nov 23) says that outrage is sweeping through places where public protest was previously unknown.
The safe Surrey commuter town of Epsom has been caught up in protest fever, and even in sparsely populated Cornwall 27,000 people took to the streets.
In genteel Worthing, 10,000 demonstrated over plans to reconfigure local hospital services. One campaigner says that a public meeting in the town was the angriest he had ever seen. The chief executive of the local strategic health authority was barracked and heckled, and left the meeting “visibly shaken”.
But why now? What are NHS mandarins and managers doing wrong to attract such vehement protest? As HSJ notes drily, “it is not the easiest time to be an NHS manager”, and it seems that many have simply been unable to convince a sceptical public that changes to services are not always about cost-cutting.
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But persuading 10,000 protesters that local changes are about reconfiguration rather than money is a difficult job that is often put off. As a Department of Health source says: “There does seem to be a reluctance to get to grip with these things.”