Letters are pouring in from people living in West Worcestershire addressed to Sir Graham Meldrum, the Chairman of the West Midlands Ambulance Trust. These are in response to a letter from Harriett Baldwin asking people to write individually, rather than just sign a petition. This is because a petition of 2,092 signatures to the Worcester News was counted as only one objection. Harriett Baldwin will personally hand over each and every one of these letters to the Trust at a meeting at the House of Commons on November 22nd.
In addition, Harriett Baldwin has written to the Chairman and Chief Executive of the West Midlands Strategic Health Authority asking them to intervene in the botched consultation. This follows a previous letter to Minister Ben Bradshaw, which has not yet received a response.
Thirdly, Harriett Baldwin has today written to Anthony Marsh, the West Midlands Ambulance Trust's Chief Executive, asking him to clarify the detailed financial costings published on the Trust's website.
Harriett Baldwin said, "I have 5 questions for Mr. Marsh about these figures.
1)Which option is which as the labelling is very confusing?
2)Why does the Trust assume that adding each additional control room costs £91K per annum until you add a fifth control room and costs suddenly rise by £270K per annum more?
3)Why does the Trust assume that the network setup costs for a third and a fourth control room are £55K higher, then suddenly £110K more if you add a fifth?
4)Why did the Trust change the redundancy figures of their preferred option from £719,000 to only £54,000 between October 10th and October 25th?
5)Why did they not reflect our proposal to sell Bransford and lease it back?
I hope to get a reply explaining these anomalies, or I may conclude that the figures have been fudged in favour of the Trust's option and against keeping Bransford open."