St Just Housing Row and Poltair Consultation
This week has been a busy week. My husband & I have become temporary carers for his disabled sister so many adjustments to family life needed in the run up to Christmas. The diary does not let up though in a week where I attended the Town Council meeting, the Poltair Consultation drop in, sat on the West Area Planning Committee, attended the Bosavern AGM, went to Plymouth for the Police and Crime Panel and ran the Christmas Pendeen Farmers’ Market. I did however enjoy a festive evening at Cape Cornwall School’s carol concert. On this, my last blog before Christmas, I will focus on the row about the allocation of Housing in St Just and the Poltair Consultation. If you go to my news section, you can catch up on Bosavern Community Farm and the Police and Crime Panel meeting I attended.
St Just Housing
After the piece in the Cornishman, I was contacted by many local people concerned that they maybe missing out on a home at the Gews Farm development. The truth of the matter is that most of the homes had more local people applying for them than there were homes available. The exception was the 3 bedroomed ones where 6 had no-one bidding for them. I was very disappointed when I first heard that but started working straight away with Council staff to get them allocated to local people. By the time of the Town Council meeting I was able to report that it was very unlikely that any of the homes would have to be allocated to people from outside of our Parish.
It does seem that the demand for 3 bed homes was lower than expected and this is probably mainly due to welfare reform changes. People will know that there is a financial penalty if you are on benefits and have a spare room. People who might have 2 children of the same sex or different sexes where both are under 10 years are affected as those children count as being in one room. The bidding system did not allow such families to bid for the 3 bed homes, at first, but because of such a high pressure on the 2 bed homes we are being more flexible. We do have to make sure people can afford them though.
Poltair Consultation
Hopefully people got along to the consultation about the future of Poltair. There are 5 options. 3 involve keeping some outpatient services at Poltair and 1 of them keeps 5 bed places at the hospital. The other 2 options involve relocating what was at Poltair to West Cornwall Hospital or relocating the outpatient services to other community health locations and community/ rehabilitative beds being at Edward Hain and Helston.
If you want to know more then go to www.kernowccg.nhs.uk . I don’t want to share my views publicly until you have all had the chance to consider your own. The main criticisms I levied at the manager, at the drop-in session in St Just, was that the Peninsula Community Health Trust need to start being honest and that if Poltair does not have an economic future then, the failure of health leaders has been their inability to describe a better service that could be provided if we let Poltair go. Human nature clings to what we know if nothing better can be imagined.
When I talk to people, very few want to go into hospital. most want to stay in hospital for as short a time as possible and most people just want to get back home to recover. Home is where most of us feel at our ease and that is probably best for our recovery.
Signing Off Till 2014
It has been a steep learning curve since May. I plan to take some rest and recuperation with my family so will not return to my blog until 2014. I hope you all get some time to enjoy what is important to you over the next 10 days or so.