Madam,

In the Cambrian News you reported on Gwynedd Council’s Care Scrutiny Committee’s review of evidence on the quality of healthcare services in the Ffestiniog “wellbeing” area.

In 2012, you reported Gwynedd Council’s opposition to the withdrawal of facilities from Ffestiniog Hospital such as inpatient beds, Minor Injury Unit and X-ray. In that item you reported Gwynedd Council’s regret that it had no power at that time to do more than express an opinion.

Gwynedd Council now has statutory responsibility for ensuring the wellbeing of its residents including their access to the healthcare service, under the Welsh Parliament’s 2014 and 2015 Wellbeing Acts. Hence the council’s evidence review session. The council has not yet reached its verdict and the next stage is on 21 September.

The various World Health Organisation measures classify the healthcare service planned by Betsi Cadwaladr as one of the most primitive in the UK. Since the healthcare service was downgraded in the Ffestiniog wellbeing area, your newspaper has published more than a dozen examples of how residents of the area have suffered from their inability to access timely, local care. On numerous other occasions, the ‘victim’ or their family has been unwilling to publicise the failings of the healthcare service in Ffestiniog and the consequential suffering they experienced. Health Boards are intended to relieve suffering and not increase it by cruel acts.

Betsi Cadwaladr seeks to obfuscate the facts by claiming that residents of the Ffestiniog wellbeing area can travel to Porthmadog, Dolgellau or Bangor to get help.

That is contrary to the Welsh Government policy of providing healthcare as close to home as possible. Betsi Cadwaladr has also claimed that only a few people suffer because of their withdrawal of services. That statement is false, but if only one person suffered, to a compassionate healthcare manager, that would be one person too many.

This week the ‘Wales Future Generations Commissioner’ intervened in the Newport bypass enquiry by insisting that under the 2015 Act, the public bodies had a duty to improve services and did not have the right to make excuses to downgrade them. Gwynedd Council has the task under the 2015 Act to decide if the services promised by Betsi Cadwaladr for the Ffestiniog wellbeing area are an “improvement” over those that were provided in 2012, before they were downgraded.

Some councillors, recognising the importance of the scrutiny they are being asked to undertake, pressed for an independent inquiry to provide impartial advice to them. This issue of requiring an independent inquiry is again on the 21 September agenda. The Welsh Parliament’s 2014 and 2015 Wellbeing Acts have given local authorities new responsibilities that not all welcome. I hope that Gwynedd councillors show that they are willing to accept and act upon their new responsibility.

Yours etc

Tom Brooks, Borth-y-Gest.

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