Bronllys Park

This is a plan to keep Bronllys Community NHS Hospital, on the present site, and to enhance it with a Health and Well-being Park. Over the years there have been all sorts of rumours about the downgrading or closure of Bronllys Hospital, not helped recently by the re-location of one of the specialist wards to Brecon. The Friends of Bronllys are working to keep the hospital open, and to make it the best it can possibly be, and so they have devised an Action Plan. This is a document entitled Bronllys Park: A Vision for the Next Hundred Years, and includes a care home, Maggie's Centre for the Terminally Ill (there are already Maggie's Centres elsewhere in the country), a TeleHealth service (which I think is medical advice on the phone), affordable housing including homes for the elderly, visitor accomodation for families from a distance away who are visiting patients, a community pub/club/cafe, library, pharmacy and concert hall, a solar energy farm based on the Green Valleys model locally, adaption of the chapel for wider use, and the opening up of allotments, a market garden, orchards and greenhouses (there are already mature apple trees on the site), better sports facilities, a helicopter landing pad for the Air Ambulance, a car pool of electric cars powered by the solar farm, and child care facilities (there is already a nursery there). All of which sounds far better than handing the site over to a commercial property developer, and all of which seems to have the costings carefully worked out so that it is achievable. The organisers seem to think that the Welsh Assembly will be sympathetic to the plan, and they need to be on board because of funding arrangements.

There will be a meeting on Thursday 23rd October at Hay School, starting at 7.30pm, to discuss the plans and to talk about taking the proposals forward. It's going to be an important meeting for the future of health care in this area.