Petition demanding beds for Shipston’s hospital heads to Parliament
A PUBLIC petition demanding the reinstatement of beds at the Ellen Badger has been signed, sealed and will soon be delivered.
As reported in the Herald last month, campaign group Beds for Badger came up with the idea of creating the petition to ensure the voices of the people in Shipston and the surrounding areas are heard by those in power.
Under parliamentary rules, MPs can present a physical petition (eg, printed on paper) straight to the House of Commons. The petition must ask clearly for the House of Commons to take some action.
In just over four weeks the campaigners have gathered 4,300 signatures – with hundreds of pages of the petition filling four boxes.
These were handed over to Stratford MP Manuela Perteghella at Shipston Rugby Club on Saturday – where a good crowd had gathered.
Many were also there to see Shipston take on Stratford in the local rugby derby – but both spectators and campaigners were gearing up for a tussle and united behind the fight for beds.
“It’s amazing how really furious people are with what has happened, there is real anger,” said petition co-ordinator Carole Gibbs. “People have shared their stories and connections with the old hospital as they’ve signed. They want the hospital that we had, the facilities that we had, the beds that we had, and none of that seems to be happening.
“This started in 2017; the building will be finished in 2025 – so eight years and we still don’t know what’s going in it, which is making people even more angry.”
Promising to fight for beds for the Badger, Mrs Perteghella explained the next step would that she will be allotted a day when she can present the petition to the Commons’ chamber.
“The petition urges the government to support our residents and to retain inpatient beds at the Ellen Badger Hospital. It will hopefully give a clear message to SWFT [South Warwickshire NHS University Foundation Trust] and to the ICB [Integrated Care Board] that we will not stop campaigning, that we want the beds that were taken away from Shipston back into our community hospital, and we will fight all the way for that.”
The ICB and SWFT maintain that community beds are better situated in denser populations such as Warwick and Leamington, and are conducting a public consultation before announcing the final decision on beds in the spring.
Disagreeing with this, the MP continued: “The ICB need to understand the rurality of my constituency, and how important it is that we have a proper community hospital with inpatient beds and with obviously all the other services that we need to sustain our needs. We have very elderly demographics, we have more houses being built, so we do need a health infrastructure. And the main thing is that the beds were there, we had a community hospital, and we want it back.”
She added: “I hope that this petition makes sure that the message gets to the decision makers.”
In September the county council’s health overview and scrutiny committee voted to allow a public consultation on the location of in-patient beds be slashed from 12 weeks to six weeks, a move that has provoked major concern.
Mrs Perteghella commented: “We asked for a meaningful consultation, and I wanted to see at least 12 weeks, with the ICB coming into the villages, into the town, and to listen and engage with residents. I’m very disappointed that it is being rushed.”
Adding her support to the demand for beds, district councillor Olivia Hatch (Green, Shipston North) said she still believed it was a winnable fight.
“We have a big building there now which has space for beds in it. And the trend in health care is to be community-based, and this would give us community rehabilitation beds. So commonsense says yes this should be winnable fight,” she said.
“It’s difficult to deal with the bureaucracy and to change the minds of those that seem to have already made their mind up.
“But hopefully this petition will help, and we will keep trying.”
The ICB and SWFT have declined to comment at this stage.
