MORE than 60 people turned out for a public meeting on Wednesday night to discuss the planned temporary closure of six of Williton Hospital’s 12 stroke beds - and recent assurances that treatment could be available at Minehead instead were angrily rejected.

The meeting, held at Danesfield School, heard speaker after speaker voice their dismay and there were calls for action in whatever way possible.

Councillors from West Somerset Council and Williton Parish Council, nurses, members of the Williton Hospital League of Friends and other organisations, as well as members of the public, were in the audience.

It was announced in September that six of the 12 specialist stroke beds at Williton Hospital, which serve people across West Somerset and beyond, would be temporarily closed in January, with a new home-based stroke rehabilitation service, the Early Supported Discharge scheme, being tested for a further 12 months in the area.

It had been planned that patients unsuited to the home scheme would be sent to a stroke unit 50 miles away at South Petherton Community Hospital if there was no room in Williton’s remaining stroke beds.

Last week it was announced that patients could be cared for by the ESD team at Minehead Community Hospital after West Somerset’s Cllrs Mandy Chilcott and Bryan Leaker agreed a deal with the NHS’s Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG), which has asked for the bed closures.

Minehead Community Hospital does not have specialist stroke rehabilitation facilities that Williton does, and the Williton Hospital League of Friends decided to go ahead with Wednesday’s public meeting themselves after it was called off by West Somerset Council once the deal with the CCG was agreed.

Full report in the Free Press