YP Letters: GPs working hard for patients despite funding and recruitment pressures

YOU have highlighted the difficulties some patients have experienced in making appointments at their local GP.

Whilst you focus on some practices in Leeds, as the professional body which represents and supports all general practitioners in the city, we believe that it is important to recognise that all practices, including those highlighted, are working extremely hard to meet the growing needs of their patients. However they are doing this despite over a decade of funding pressures and the challenge to recruit and retain sufficient GPs and nurses.

There is a risk that articles such as this further demoralise hard working practices, but we hope that the citizens of Leeds will use this to campaign for more support and investment into general practice so that we can deliver the quality of service that all GPs strive for.

From: Nick Ville, Director of Policy, NHS Confederation.

THE NHS is seeing ever-increasing numbers of patients in A&E and is buckling under the strain (The Yorkshire Post, February 15).

Despite the best efforts of frontline staff, the number of patients in England treated within target times at A&E reached significant lows.

Yet we should recognise that this is still an achievement for staff, despite us not meeting the target. We need to find a more sustainable way of providing care to an increasingly aging population with ever-more complex needs.

The new NHS Long Term Plan, with its emphasis on joined-up community care, is good news for patients, who should see some of this intense pressure ease.

From: Mr PL Taylor, Milner Street, Lockwood, Huddersfield.

WHY is the Government not discouraging people from consuming foodstuffs which are a health hazard? Are there too many vested interests in this country?

A healthy population would very much ease the pressures on an already overstretched NHS. Also a healthy population is a happy population and, importantly a productive population.

I am an average OAP – why can’t the people in positions of authority and responsibility not see the wood for the trees?

Threat to historic area

From: Jane Houlton, Granville Street, Skipton.

AT the same time that Craven folk and the District Council are celebrating the renewal of the Skipton Business Improvement District project, and welcoming the possible regeneration of the whole station area of Skipton, it is a shame that a threat to the Park Hill area of Skipton is going under the radar.

Many of your readers know the Park Hill area – historic site of a Civil War battery site, route of two long distance footpaths, providing stunning views both to and from the town, and out to the Dales to the north. These green hills close to the heart of the town form for many the inherent beauty and charm of the place.

It was revealed a number of ‘main modifications’ to Craven’s Local Plan had been recommended by the Planning Inspector, and that the consultation has now started.

Many people, including most residents of Craven, will be totally unaware that, among these modifications, at this late stage in the planning process, the whole of the Park Hill area, bounded by Grassington Road, Short Lees Lane, Skipton Woods, and Chapel Hill, is to be deleted as a protected open green space, and will be available for development by the landowners.

If those who object to this loss of an important, historic part of Skipton life and landscape wish to express their view, they must do so within the next six weeks.

Information about the consultation is available at cravendc.gov.uk/planning policyconsultations, and also in paper form at the council offices in Belle Vue Square, Skipton, and in Craven libraries.

Protest fines
or praise?

From: Roger Crowther, Scarborough.

IT is deplorable that Robert Goodwill MP should dismiss the international campaign for action on global warming as “an excuse for skipping school” and encouraging the school to fine their families.

He should be applauding them for their action and concern and looking to his own government to do more to combat this climate threat. The action will not “damage their education” as he also suggests; it will enhance it by increasing their knowledge of what is happening to the climate.

From: Peter Hyde, Driffield.

Are the parents of the children who skipped school to protest against climate change going to be fined for letting their children stay away as they would if they went on holiday during term?

Caption slip

From: Michael J Robinson, Park Lane, Berry Brow, Huddersfield.

YOUR caption in last week’s Picture Past (The Yorkshire Post, February 12) tells that “Owain Arwel Hughes conducts the Halle Orchestra in Dewsbury Town Hall, 1986”.

He might have done, but that isn’t a picture of any such occasion. In the photograph you have published, members of The Huddersfield Choral Society are posed with Mr Hughes in Huddersfield Town Hall.

Way out ads

From: Mrs EH Bell, Newland Avenue, Driffield.

I COULDN’T agree more with criticism of TV adverts between programmes and, of course, not only on the BBC. They drive me to distraction, as very often its far from easy to understand what on earth is being advertised as they are so “way out”!