Lynne's Parliament and Haringey diary

Spend the morning in Ealing for the by-election. Seems very jolly over there and upbeat. Main community event of the day back in the constituency is going to Avenue Gardens Residents' Association to do a 'Question Time'.

Key issues from the evening included Haringey's lack of consultation with residents over planning proposals - in particular - Haringey Heartlands. And - even if there is a consultation - they ignore it.

One resident raised the issue of the proposed polyclinics - and the potential of these plans to denude us of our local GP practices. That is what we need to make sure doesn't happen.

It was interesting when I met with the Trust and asked what I would think is a critical question - what proportion of GP visits require further action (diagnostics, referrals to a clinic, etc), they couldn’t give a full answer.

But this is key to the polyclinics idea – because if, say 90% of doctor’s visits require follow up with one of the services that will be at the polyclinic – then having the GP and those other services all on one site can have advantages of saving further trips (and so further delays). But if those 90% instead don’t require further services, then having GP practices centralised isn’t nearly so attractive.

Anyway - back to Avenue Gardens Residents' Association - we also ranged over excess of traffic, HGVs, the tick-box society, the quality of councillors, the poor quality of decision-making at Planning Committee, and other topics too. I enjoyed it - as I always do. Meeting people at events like this always reaffirms the point to the whole process. It is always about peoples' lives!

Labels: nhs, polyclinics