Sir,
The Local Health Board, in conjunction with the Pembrokeshire Community Health Council, has now completed seven formal public consultation meetings across the county to discuss the review of hospital services; in addition we have attended various meetings at the request of interested parties. This consultation period continues until June 26.
The LHB has been pleased by the fantastic attendance at each meeting and is very grateful to those individuals for taking the time to come along; contribute to the debate and on times give personal accounts of their experiences in receiving health services. All of the contributions received have been extremely valuable.
We have been delighted to meet so many local residents during the consultation period to date and have the opportunity to discuss with them the health service challenges facing not only our community, but across Wales.
The purpose of the consultation process is to present the regional proposals for changes to our hospital services, not forgetting the need to strengthen our local primary care and community services, and to listen to our community's views on the way forward.
The strength of feeling so far has been overwhelmingly in support of keeping hospital services in Haverfordwest. However, we do feel that there has been an acceptance that change is required to ensure that our health services remain secure in the years to come and we want to work with our colleagues in both health and social services to achieve this.
At the start of the process we promised that we would listen to your views and that if people felt that there were alternatives that should be considered, we would do just that. The Community Health Council, with support from the Local Health Board, will now look at alternatives in light of your views at this stage. We must stress that any alternatives will still need to be considered as part of the regional plan.
To accommodate the extra month given by the Minister to receive submissions, the LHB will now hold a special board meeting in September to discuss the proposals within the regional plan, the results of the Pembrokeshire public consultation and the Community Health Council's response. We give our reassurance to the people of Pembrokeshire that we will ensure our community's voice is heard in this regional debate.
Once again, thank you to all who have contributed to the consultation process so far, we will continue to keep everyone informed of how this develops.
Chris Martin, Chairman, Bernardine Rees, Chief Executive,
Pembrokeshire Local Health Board.