Having promised community rehabilitation beds at both Frenchay and Thornbury hospital sites in 2015, last year local NHS chiefs abandoned those plans and went back to the drawing board.

Your Focus Team’s concerns deepened in January when we learnt that North Bristol NHS Trust (NBT) had given the nod to developer Redrow to put in a planning application on land previously set aside for new health facilities at the former Frenchay Hospital site.

Now new plans have been announced that would see only 40-50 “rehabilitation” beds provided, fewer than previously suggested and all at Frenchay. Thornbury would have just 6-10 NHS-funded beds, not for rehabilitation, within a new privately run Nursing Care home.

We welcome efforts to treat more people at home but with a fast growing population are they providing enough beds for those for whom that is not appropriate?  We also think that allowing homes to be built on the land at Frenchay previously set aside for health facilities would make the latest proposals for the old hospital site hard to deliver.

We will keep fighting for the health services we need.