This last year has I believe been both interesting and challenging, in that of necessity both Bill and I have had to spread our wings further and become involved in far more additional groups including:

• West Wilts Ambulance Forum
• West Wilts PPI
• Community Carers Planning Group
• COPD
• Breath Easy
• The Air That We Breath
• Age Concern
• League of Friends
• Westbury Town Council

Many of you will be aware that the Avon, Gloucester and West Wilts Ambulance Groups recently amalgamated to form one unit, the theory being that this would enable the ambulance section to consolidate and save management personnel allowing some £1.4 million to be saved annually. This would then be diverted to boost front line services,there are apparently procedures in place to enable the Ambulance Forum members to check this, something which I challenged at the January meeting. There is currently some unrest across the groups connected with salary negotiations, and further difficulties within the Forest of Deane area where ambulances were being diverted to more populated areas to achieve higher response levels.

Alongside this has been the work we were doing on the Pathways for Change which was overtaken by the PCT decision to close Bradford on Avon and the reduction in services from Westbury Hospital. At the time I firmly believed that we in our various groups were identifying areas where changes needed to be made to enable the PCT to provide a more effective service, this in my view ceased to be the case when the goal posts were moved without consultation.

During the last year we have been involved with the surgery development from 1 to 3 sites along with the introduction of enhanced telephone systems (the improvements achieved can be seen from the recent Patient survey), we have also seen the introduction of the Message in a Bottle System.

At the last AGM I said that we had 3 main tasks ahead, they were:

1. To promote the Forum and its activities
2. To generate more income to benefit patients of the surgery
3. To attract more members to the group

I believe that we have achieved most of these, we have recently seen ourselves in all 3 local publications highlighting our achievements.

As you know we have generated far more income over the recent period and put that income to effective use, all requests for funding are looked at and where a case can be identified which will improve services to patients then we have generally responded positively. You will note that in the case of the Accucheck equipment subsequent patient surveys have shown positive feedback.

Just to emphasise our achievements I thought it might be useful to produce a full list of purchases over the period that Bill and I have been in office, they are:-

• 2 x Trampets for use by Cardiac Rehab Patients
• Paediatric Pulse Oximeter
• Vaccine Refrigerator
• Dopler Probe
• Magnifying Lamp
• Paediatric Infant Cuff
• Reference Manuals
• Specialist Ear Aquipment Ambubags
• Acucheck Machine
• Portable ECG Machine

As for new members, we have grown in numbers over the year, however the Forum is lacking in any really young members ie 20-30 year olds.

Jim Rankin, 9th March 2006