OXFORDSHIRE NHS community hospital buildings, staff and services are facing a new threat from the steamroller of privatisation, under the guise of cost savings.

Decisions taken today will affect the quality of health and social care services in Chipping Norton, Henley and Witney, for years to come. Campaigning group Oxfordshire Keep Our NHS Public is appalled that clinical evidence is being ignored, and opposition from these local communities is again outweighed by financial justifications from Oxfordshire officials.

Ongoing uncertainty with the provision of all NHS beds, services and staff at Chipping Norton, Townlands and Witney leaves our communities under threat from the private sector where profits dictate services, leaving vulnerable, unwell residents and their families stranded without adequate consultation.

Health policies and constant restructuring by successive governments have led to the dismantling of our National Health Service. The private sector now has an alarming share of NHS contracts and the voices of concerned Oxfordshire people are unheard. The NHS logo may still fly above the building, but it is more likely that a commercial for-profit company is providing the service.

Health funding has been repeatedly slashed, not least to mental health services, leaving the NHS cash-strapped.

Constant public denouncements of NHS staff and services by the Secretary of State for Health and repeated attempts to reduce their pay and conditions have succeeded in demoralising staff.

Here in Oxfordshire, owing to high living costs, we also have the especially difficult task of recruiting and retaining sufficient numbers of skilled nurses and doctors, essential to providing high quality care for their patients.

Now in addition to this pressure, we have a particularly dangerous precedent being set by local councillors, who are claiming that the intermediate care offered in Chipping Norton will no longer be provided by skilled nurses, but by health care assistants and therapists, instead. And fewer of them, as well. Where, we ask, is the clinical evidence for that assertion?

Local people are rightly defending their local healthcare services and the diminished right of our NHS to provide them. It matters to us that we continue to have a publicly funded, publicly accountable and publicly provided National Health Service.

Dr KEN WILLIAMSON
Chairman
Oxon Keep Our NHS Public
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford