Save Our NHS

A growing number of our local NHS services are being shut down or privatised. But lots of them are still standing proud and serving our communities - and it’s thanks to local people working together to stand up for them.

If you or your local group of 38 Degrees members want to protect a local NHS service from closure or privatisation, please click the big red button to start your campaign.

It all starts with a petition, it takes just a few minutes to get it off the ground, and you’ll have tips and support through each step.

Or enter your postcode below the petition counter to search for existing campaigns near you.

163,605
of 200,000 signatures
across 37 local campaigns
Start A Campaign
Find your local campaign
Your Location

Campaigns (37)

  • Tendring
    Stop plans to close Clacton on Sea's Minor Injuries Unit
    North East Essex CCG are trying to shut down the Minor Injuries Unit which is situated at Clacton Hospital. This would mean that patients wanting to see a doctor, or needing urgent medical care, would have to travel to Colchester. Clacton's population is increasing and health services in the town are already suffering. GPs surgeries are not able to cope with their workload now, it is unthinkable that we may now lose the valuable service that our Minor Injuries Unit provides. This area has a large elderly population along with a large percentage of vulnerable people with mental health issues. It is not acceptable that elderly and vulnerable people have to travel to Colchester. Many people do not have their own transport and would not be able to afford to take public transport to Colchester to see a doctor. We have to stop this closure! This petition has been launched by TenPAG, Tendring Pensioners Action Group
    2,152 of 3,000 Signatures
    Created by Sheila Hammond Picture
  • Chelmsford
    Defend our A&E at Broomfield Hospital
    This change means Broomfield hospital would become a minor injuries walk-in centre, which makes a mockery of government claims to establish a 24/7 NHS. We all know a family member or a friend who could need urgent care and has to get to an A&E very quickly. Without a local A&E department people would have to travel up to an hour to get to an A&E, if someone is in a critical condition that time could be the difference. Health bosses are playing with the lives of the people of mid-Essex. We have already had a great response to this petition which shows that the people of Chelmsford are overwhelmingly opposed to this change. Our local hospital needs everybody. And we need a campaign to keep Broomfield A&E
    21,504 of 25,000 Signatures
    Created by Andy Abbott Picture
  • Newton Abbot
    Save Ashburton & Buckfastleigh Community Hospital
    Community Hospitals provide health and medical services such as minor injuries departments and hospital beds for those well enough to be released from General Hospitals but still too sick to return to their own homes. These hospitals act as intermediaries, providing care for some of the most vulnerable people in south devon in particular the old and infirm. In particular patients who would have used Ashburton & Buckfastleigh Community Hospital will be put into Totnes Community Hospital instead. This is farther from home, there is no public transport links, and therefore will only cost more money to non-emergency patient transport services. Beds in community hospitals mean General Hospitals are able to move recovering patients enabling them to treat more critical patients. Losing these beds will only serve to bed block General Hospitals, such as Torbay, leading to poorer service. When it comes to Medical treatment this can be the difference in providing outstanding care (saving lives), or being prevented from treating the sick or injured (resulting in preventable deaths and suffering).
    1,606 of 2,000 Signatures
    Created by Jessica Ford
  • Save Hinchingbrooke Hospital
    The future of Hinchingbrooke Hospital is under threat and the proposed merger with Peterborough and Stamford Foundation NHS Trust may see the closure of Accident & Emergency, Maternity and Haematology and also the downgrading of the hospital. We will fight for the retainment of Hinchingbrooke Hospital. Hinchingbrooke Hospital currently provides medical and emergency care for 160,000 residents in Huntingdon and the surrounding rural area. Further housing stock has been planned and approved for development in the near future, which will increase the need to have a District Hospital in Huntingdon. Peterborough and Addenbrookes, the two nearest alternative hospitals are 40 minutes journey time at best, along very busy roads assuming you have your own transport. Not ideal if you are very unwell. We will fight to save Hinchingbrooke. https://s.bsd.net/38degrees/main/page/-/CBY/Hands_Off_Hinchingbrooke_Logo_large.jpg
    3,705 of 4,000 Signatures
    Created by Daniel Laycock
  • Stop this shambolic Sussex Ambulance privatisation
    On April 1st a woefully-ill-equipped private firm, Coperforma, replaced the NHS’s South East Coast Ambulance Service in a botched privatisation of NHS services. The mobile phone app the company uses often doesn’t work, especially in areas of poor mobile reception and its own ambulance drivers have said the company is ‘out of its depth’. The result? • Cancer patients have missed oncology appointments after ambulances failed to turn up to collect them. • Patients with kidney failure have not been able to receive scheduled sessions of kidney dialysis for the same reason, with some missing two of their three treatments in a week. • So many patients have become stuck at the Royal Sussex County hospital in Brighton because their transport has not arrived that it has paid for taxis and other private vehicle suppliers to take them home. • Staff there have had to stay until midnight to ensure kidney patients arriving hours after their scheduled start time have received vital dialysis. • Coperforma vehicles have turned up to collect patients who have already died. Patients, relatives, NHS bodies, Trade Unions and local MPs have severely criticised the service’s performance but still local CCGs persist with the untenable private company. The previous public provider regularly had approval ratings of over 90%. For more information http://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/apr/12/patients-wait-hours-for-ambulances-nhs-transport-service-privatised-sussex http://www.theargus.co.uk/news/local/14432002.Patient_transport_company_out_of_its_depth__say_its_own_drivers/
    11,166 of 15,000 Signatures
    Created by Carl Walker
  • London
    Defend the NHS: Don't privatise/outsource NHS pathology services
    The path lab at Homerton Hospital is a crucial part of the hospital, providing analysis of blood and urine samples and other important tests to ensure patients receive the right diagnosis and treatment, as quickly as possible. Trust managers had backed the development of pathology at the hospital by commissioning a new laboratory building in 2014. But the building contractors went into administration leaving the Trust with nothing but a hole in the ground. The Hospital Board is reviewing the provision of pathology services. All options are being considered including privatisation; the Board is being advised by external management consultants. The Trust Board is due to decide on the future of the pathology service at its June 2016 meeting. We are very concerned at the possibility that path lab services could be transferred to a “factory lab”, miles across London or even in Essex. This would lead to a deterioration of samples, poorer results and a less responsive service for patients. The Homerton is a hospital that prides itself on providing high quality services to local people and our Pathology department is integral to this. Homerton’s path lab provides an excellent service. A rigorous accreditation exercise found that it outperforms many other NHS path labs. At the moment, the path lab can respond quickly to changing local needs and new medical research. If it was privatised or outsourced, any changes would mean renegotiating contracts with another provider. Privatisation has already left NHS Trusts with huge costs stretching into the future. It is always presented as a cheap way forward – but the price is paid later, to private firms who are profiting from our publicly funded NHS. Please support our campaign and sign our petition (Facebook & Twitter). We can’t leave the future of Homerton Hospital’s path lab to the whims of a private firm. We want to keep it in the NHS, at Homerton Hospital. Let’s defend the NHS and put patients before profits.
    3,652 of 4,000 Signatures
    Created by Saveour Pathlab Picture
  • Paignton
    Save Paignton, Torbay, Hospital.
    Many local people rely on this hospital for various reasons. Many elderly and disabled people rely on this being a local hospital, easier to access than the larger Torbay Hospital, based in Torquay.
    133 of 200 Signatures
    Created by Sheila Amies-Byron
  • Clacton-on-Sea
    Return Peter Bruff Ward To CLACTON!
    In 2007 consultation on mental health facilities in north Essex gave rise to lively public meetings which resulted in the ward being saved, but in 2016 there was NO consultation because apparently moving a ward to another hospital in another town so long as it bears the same name is NOT a closure!!! At the very least, N.E.P.T. (North Essex Partnership Trust predecessors along with S.E.P.T. South Essex Partnership Trust, to E.P.U.T. Essex Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust) should have held a new consultation process, but our feeling is still, along with the views and sentiments expressed by many eleven years ago, that nothing has changed, except that the facilities in Clacton needed revising including to allow for NHS single sex privacy and dignity accommodation, for which there was ample space available by using the adjacent and connected former Freeland Court. While people are often sent many miles away to find an available bed, we contended that mental health services could ill afford to lose beds in Clacton, though we would have welcomed extra beds in Colchester, but in addition, not instead of! As we were protesting the Colchester move we learnt from a whistleblower that the trust intended to downgrade the ward to an assessment centre, making a mockery of their assertion that the ward would be exactly the same in it's new location and if true, this would be a very definite change of service demanding thorough consultation! This was vehemently denied at the time but now we learn, not even 18 months later that service changes are being considered and this time, unlike the move, they do intend to consult! If after a wide consultation among all stakeholders including professionals, staff and public it can be demonstrated that the consulted changes would be in the best interest of patients, we shall be content, though we do not believe it will. If, as we are led to believe, the plans are indeed to downgrade Peter Bruff from an acute ward to an assessment centre this will amount to a de facto loss of 17 beds at a time of continuing high occupancy and the likelihood exists that patients needing continuing acute care may not find a bed within Colchester hospital and maybe forced to travel many miles away to find one. Two years ago we raised concerns over the difficulties many living in Clacton would face accessing Colchester. "With Colchester being about 15 miles away from Clacton concern was raised for patients who when discharged would face an expensive taxi bill or the prospect of at least two buses, train, long walk or combination! This distance would also likely make it difficult for many reasons, perhaps financial, for friends and families of patients to visit. Day visits and weekend visits home, for those recovering all made that more difficult when recovery itself is difficult enough!" 15 miles may soon seem like wishful thinking! And all this mainly on the pretext of saving the money spent on rent at Clacton!. Here's what we found out about that! " N.E.P.T. did not own the Clacton Peter Bruff Ward, but RENTED it from NHS Properties!! This was one of their excuses for wishing to CLOSE, I mean, MOVE the ward so as to save money on rent, but a freedom of information request revealed that N.E.P.T. were in fact only paying a "PEPPERCORN RENT!" https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/346733/response/855134/attach/2/FOI%20190716%2001%20reply%2018.8.16.pdf?cookie_passthrough=1 Safeguarding the service as it is may well be within our gift. It is doubtless thanks to everyone's efforts that E.P.U.T. are contemplating any consultation whatsoever because our first notification from a whistleblower indicated a fait d'compli. Well done everyone! I still dream that the day will come when we can "Keep Peter Bruff Ward Open In CLACTON!
    1,056 of 2,000 Signatures
    Created by Tom Wood Picture
  • Brighton
    Save The Willows GP Surgery
    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 !
    1,402 of 2,000 Signatures
    Created by Mitchie Alexander
  • Keep bursaries for student nurses
    There's already a shortage of UK trained nurses and the withdrawal of bursaries and introduction of loans will be detrimental in recruiting people for training. It will lead to even greater crisis in health care provision.
    2,182 of 3,000 Signatures
    Created by Sue Occleston