Council Meeting Part Three - Emergency Services and Updates

Alan Powell brought the next item to the attention of the council. He'd gone to someone's house to do some carpentry, and they told him all about the terrible time they'd had the day before. The lady of the house had had a fall - something quite serious, as she was elderly - and they rang the ambulance. And then they rang again - several times. Three hours after the first phone call, a paramedic arrived, and the ambulance only arrived after they'd waited nearly four hours. They'd also tried ringing Hay Surgery, and none of the doctors was available to come out. There's a paramedic of some sort attached to the Fire Station, but he wasn't alerted either.
South Powys is a huge area, but it seems that there is only one ambulance on duty to cover it - and it takes quite a while to get a person to hospital (usually Abergavenny) from Hay, during which time there is no ambulance available at all for any other emergencies. A formal letter of complaint is going off to the Health Services, and both Kirsty Williams (AM) and Roger Williams (MP) are being informed so they can take it up.
On the same subject, I was chatting to a lady today who goes to the Bell Bank Club, which is for elderly and blind people - a little while ago one of their members fell over. They called the Surgery, and found that none of the doctors would come out, and they ended up calling the Air Ambulance! "You feel so guilty, calling them out," she said, "but I suppose if no-one called them, we'd lose the service."

And now I feel I must apologise to the County Councillors on the licensing committee - I said in an earlier post that they had failed to make a decision at a public meeting about the Globe's new licensing plans, and it turns out that it wasn't their fault at all - the Globe sprang some extra information on them at the very last minute, so they had to postpone. In the end, the meeting at County Hall lasted all day, so the matter was gone into very thoroughly, and now the new licence has been granted - and we'll have to wait and see how it goes.

There's a meeting on 24th January at Bishop Bevan Hall in Brecon, from 6pm from 8pm, about the Stroke Unit and Bronllys Hospital. Fiona Howard and Ellie Spencer are going on behalf of the council - the organisers had limited places to 2 people per council due to the size of the hall. So they will report back next month.

And finally, the key of the public toilets was formally handed over to Rob Golesworthy, so he can take on the important duty of locking them up at nights for the next month - though he did say that he would need a training day and a risk assessment!