GP practice is in decline in Hastings. Appointments are already limited and waiting times long, and why is this? There simply aren't enough doctors. Deficit in training doctors, the unfair terms of junior doctor contracts and the unattractive proposition of a general practitioners workload in comparison to their salaries has meant that there is a shortage in GPs. The lack of doctors and the state of health and healthcare services in a town as affected by poverty as Hastings, should be a priority. Today, checking local job listings, I found 12 positions for GPs in Hastings in just the first search page. Multiple practices in the area are short of doctors and are advertising to no avail, and a few of the remaining practices are currently offering "inadequate" services, not through incompetence but that there is not enough doctors to cover the workload. 5 Practices have been taken over by IMH, a private healthcare provider, these practices are also struggling to recruit doctors and provide care to standard for their approximately 20,000 patients. We need to act now, as the worst end result of this is not privatization but that while conditions are worsening and there is a paucity of care thousands of patients with serious morbidities could deteriorate, unable to be seen. A&Es are not the answer for these people as they are already overloaded and waiting times in Hastings are particularly high. We need to make a stand and we need to do it now, we need to tell the Government that we do not accept these standards of care.

The Friary site was gifted in 1920 by Richard Cooper MP for the ‘permanent use and benefit of the citizens of Lichfield’. It’s an important and historic public resource for the people of Lichfield and surrounding areas. It is not just a library building, but a fantastic community hub. The proposals to relocate to St Mary’s in the Market Square would see a drastic reduction in floor size, so the space for books, computers and various community groups will be greatly diminished. Library services are evolving and public funding is being slashed, but the County Council has a duty to ensure an open and democratic public consultation about the future of the site, before any decisions are made on the future of the building. The County has shown a lack of transparency on it's strategy for disposal and some details of the deal have only recently been disclosed. To achieve the disposal of the whole site requires the Library and Record Office to move out. The County Council is obviously motivated by the financial pressures they are under rather than the local community benefit the services and site provide. Once the site is sold, it will be lost to the people of Lichfield forever.

Chancellor George Osborne is committed to cutting a further 100,000 Civil Service jobs by 2020 and shrinking the entire Government Estate by 75% before 2023. Government services that the public rely on are being decimated as a result of job cuts. Examples from the Passport Office, HMCTS, Land Registry, HMRC, DWP and elsewhere show that cuts in the Civil Service are having a negative impact on service users. Communities are being cut-off from local services. The Civil Service is near to breaking point, the digital technology replacing local services untested and unstable making the planned cuts unsustainable. In Stoke-on-Trent the HMRC have announced that Blackburn House tax office will close by or before 2020 with the loss of between 250-300 jobs to the local economy. Locally DWP has lost around a third of its workforce in the area since 2010 to the detriment of service delivery and the welfare of its remaining workforce. The impact of the loss of this significant number of jobs to the local economy and labour market cannot be underestimated. There is no clear evidence that growth in private sector jobs within the area will replace these jobs. We call on the Government to halt the cuts to Civil Service jobs in Stoke-on-Trent and North Staffordshire and invest in Central Government services within the region.

At yesterday's Penge Forum meeting which was very well attended, standing room only, residents, trustees and councillor’s agreed to set up an action group led by Cllr Kevin Brooks, to work with and support the Trustees to devise a plan to make the services provided at Melvin Hall financially sustainable. Trustees had given notice of closure to LBB but the portfolio holder for care appeared to have listened to the residents demand to save this vital service in Penge, and he suggested there was a possibility of further rent relief payments and an opportunity of hiring out the halls when not required by Age Concern. This is just a very brief update on our last blog on the possible closure of Melvin Hall. This facility has not yet been saved, there is still a long way to go so work needs to start now to engage with the Trustees and LBB and take this fight forward. Ever since opening at the end of the second world war the Melvin Hall Day Centre’s main aim has been to increase the happiness of the older people of Penge.

Without my car, I'm not safe. I use my vehicle to get to work, the supermarket, the shops, the cleaners, the hairdressers, to visit family, to volunteer, to do everything I need to do. Without my car, I cannot get about. I cannot safely walk to the bus stop, and should I use public transport I have no guarantee that my mobility will remain long enough for me to get to my destination or even get home. I've been stranded in city centres and other places because I used public transport and then wasn't strong enough to return to a bus stop and get home. Many people with motability vehicles rely on these to get by. Without my car, I couldn't work. If I can't work, I can't pay my rent. If I can't pay my rent, I don't have anywhere to live - disabled people are facing these choices today. Many disabled people have 'mild-moderate' support needs. That means, social services cannot afford to help them in this climate of cuts and their only way forward is disability benefits or a motability vehicle. Without the motability vehicle, we become vulnerable. We can exert ourselves, get weaker, get to a place where we become more reliant on the state, cannot work, cannot socialise and collectively cost more in healthcare. That argument doesn't matter though. What matters is that collectively we have a right and a need to access a full and equivalent life and bit by bit rights are being stripped away. Re-evaluate and stop removing people's motability cars.

The Practice Group plc (a private company) has been running The Willows Surgery in Lower Bevendean along with four other GP surgeries in Brighton and Hove. At the beginning of this year they announced that they would no longer be running their Brighton and Hove surgeries after June (this already follows the closure of two of the city's GP surgeries last year). This announcement has left a huge hole and The Willows is now threatened with closure. Lower Bevendean is in a somewhat isolated area on the outskirts of Brighton. It is an area of mostly low income households and is made up of largely council and ex-council housing. The surgery has just under 2,000 patients and all have been feeling extremely anxious since the news. No-one wants to see their GP surgery close down! If The Willows were to close patients would have to travel outside their local area to see a doctor. The nearest GP to Lower Bevendean would be a long trek up and down a hilly area and as a large number of The Willows patients are elderly or disabled or in poor health they would not be able to manage the extra travel to see a Doctor. Even if travelling wasn't a problem, the nearest GP surgery simply has not got the capacity to take on an extra 2,000 patients. So realistically patients would have to travel a lot further to register with a new GP. As there seems to be no 'highest priority' scheme in place, the elderly and the less able bodied will be the last in the race to find a new GP and will find themselves having to travel the furthest. We've heard reports of elderly patients in tears as they are so worried about what will happen if their doctor disappears from their community. The less frail residents are angry. Why must they travel across the city to see a doctor? How is it possible that an NHS GP will vanish from the neighbourhood because the private company who were running the surgery decided that they wanted to earn more profit from us? In order to keep our NHS public we need to fight the 'behind our backs' privatisation of our health services! We need to make sure that our health service is about people and not profits! The community in Lower Bevendean need your support in their fight to stop the closure of The Willows GP Surgery. The community of Lower Bevendean needs to have local access to a GP and they require NHS England, along with Brighton and Hove CCG to ensure that a GP service will continue at the Willows Surgery !

The bus is the only link between Glossop and Stepping Hill Hospital (Stockport). Withdrawal of this service on the 28th March will result in the total removal of the only public transport link for residents on Glossop Road, Marple Bridge, Lane Ends and Chisworth. The link from the Charlesworth to the doctors surgeries, shops of Marple Bridge and Marple will be lost. Hawk Green will lose its link High Lane / Hazel Grove and its direct link to Stepping Hill Hospital. There are already problems with availability of car parking at Marple Bridge, Marple Station, Marple, Hazel Grove and Stepping Hill hospital. Withdrawal of the 394 service will exacerbate these problems. The service is used by students travelling to Marple Ridge College at various times of the day: withdrawal will restrict students to travel on the peak time college services only.

This has heavily impacted on the local community. Many people, especially the elderly in this rural area, rely on public transport for getting around Perthshire and to the major Scottish cities. As a popular tourist destination it also makes it much harder for visitors to reach us by bus. Please sign this petition to show that people value our public transport and how important it is in rural areas.

The organization helps thousands of vulnerable, including people with mental health issues and disadvantaged Derby and Derbyshire residents a year with debt advice, free legal assistance and advocacy. It is vital these groups get help and support.

Free school meals, for the worst off children, support the very academic achievements that the government say they seek for everyone. Suspending the subsidy of their own meals would demonstrate solidarity with their own aims.

Jeremy Hunt has made no secret of his opposition to the NHS as founded on the principles of the 1942 Beveridge report. His intransigence in the face of the current negotiations has to be read in this context. The NHS has the support of the whole country; it is now time for us to act in unison to support the junior doctors as part of a wider commitment to the principle of a free at the point of service, publicly funded and owned NHS. We call for the TUC to weigh into the current pay and conditions dispute by calling a general strike against the imposition of the proposed contract on junior doctors. The contract is a mark of the hostility that the current Health Secretary has for the NHS as it is currently instituted. It does not serve any ends but those of a government fundamentally committed to the run down and decline of the NHS. We must unite in its defense and send a clear message that the country will not tolerate the piecemeal destruction of the NHS.

Public libraries are currently under attack as never before. Quite apart from the imperatives of cutting council spending, some people question the point of public libraries. With the advent of the internet and the ebook, public libraries are described as out-dated and of being a luxury we cannot afford when other services are facing financial pressure. However, “The National Literacy Trust says that children who go to a library are twice as likely as those who don’t to read well. It is not just picking up a book. It is the social experience of reading, talking about the books, browsing, comparing what you have read with family and friends. Librarians open doors to new worlds, new possibilities. Children and adults do not just need information to thrive as thinking beings, but stories. Libraries are not in decline because of some natural, historic progression, but because of the monstrous cultural vandalism of savage cost-cutting." (Alan Gibbons) The community aspect of libraries, including storytimes/rhymetimes and free picture books is especially important for new mothers and their children. For many children the library is the only place they will ever be physically engaged with all the possibilities there are on the shelves. “That is why many small children’s activities are based in library buildings, a resource not to be found or replicated anywhere else. Having a space where the sole purpose is to engage with words and pictures, to create memories that last a lifetime, is a delight and not to be given away lightly.” (Ann Chambers) Even leaving aside books, the lack of access to the internet can reduce exam results by a grade. Public libraries can provide that access to children who do not have it at home. Borrowing of children’s books is increasing. Education is for adults and senior citizens too – senior citizens use libraries for education (notably, the U3A), students for quiet study, those new to computers for computer training. Libraries offer everyone a safe place to meet others, to use resources they could not otherwise afford and to strengthen the local community. The long-term effect of closing our libraries for a short-term monetary gain would be catastrophic for our towns and villages.