Editor,

It is being suggested that the former Bodlondeb care home should be sold to the private sector for “a nominal £1” to revive Ceredigion council’s stalled disposal plan (Cabinet must insist home sale happens, Cambrian News Letters, 12 March).

We certainly agree with your correspondent that that would represent a risk, but as Labour Party members we are not at all happy with the idea that a public asset worth £300,000-plus should be handed over to the private sector free of charge.

But if that is the best plan our woeful council can come up with, then so be it.

We would at least expect that a restrictive covenant would be included in the sale, so that the site could only ever be used for social and/or health care.

However, the fact that the Bodlondeb site and building have remained publicly-owned for the last two years due to the council’s inability to implement its own decisions can now be turned to spectacular advantage, by reversing the whole decision in the public interest.

In its spending review last September, the Westminster government announced an extra £1bn for social care, and presumably an amount based on that will arrive with Welsh councils via the Barnett formula. Even that funding uplift was just seen as sticking-plaster, and the Tories won the December election on the promise of a wholesale review of social care provision and funding.

Clearly the massive abscess of neglect for social care that has built up over the decades is about to burst, and priorities and funding are going to look very different in the near future. Also, short-term, it is claimed that Ceredigion has already received a more favourable funding settlement for the coming financial year.

Therefore we believe that current circumstances point overwhelmingly to the reversal of the council’s previous decision on Bodlondeb and to its retention and development as a focus for social and/or health care in the public sector.

The first phase of Bodlondeb’s return to productive use for the benefit of the public could be a crash refurbishment to equip this existing, empty and centrally-located building as an intensive care unit for use in the coronavirus emergency – something which is now most urgently needed, given that there are only 25 intensive care beds in the whole of the Hywel Dda Health Board area, and most of those are occupied at any given time.

Joint working between the council and health board will be possible in these emergency conditions, the four governments in the UK have already agreed to act in unison on the emergency, and the Tories have promised the NHS all the funds it needs for the duration. We do not think that even they can try to go back on that.

All this needs is for Ceredigion council to recognise the potential of the present situation, learn from its previous mistakes and take the first steps.

Tom O’Malley Chair, North Branch, Ceredigion Labour Party, Y Ffald, Bow Street; and Cllr Alex Mangold (Penparcau)

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