

NHS CHIEF OPEN TO HARTLEPOOL HOSPITAL FUTURE AFTER ROYAL QUIZZING
The CEO of NHS England has offered new hope in the row over Hartlepool Hospital after being quizzed by Conservative Candidate Richard Royal. NHS Chief Simon Stevens said that he was opposed to too much centralisation in larger regional hospitals and wanted to “work with local communities who wanted to bring their hospital services back”. At an event with NHS Chief Simon Stevens, Royal posed public questions that local residents desperately want answers to regarding the future


Letter to Jeremy Hunt re hospital
Rt Hon Jeremy Hunt MP Secretary of State for Health Department of Health
Richmond House
79 Whitehall
London
SW1A 2NS 2nd February 2015 Dear Secretary of State, I am writing to you regarding the issue of hospital services in Hartlepool, which you will already be aware of the strength of local feeling about. The Labour Government brushed aside Lord Darzi’s 2005 recommendation to improve existing services at Hartlepool Hospital in favour of closing that facility and building


Royal supports charity’s call for better mental health provision
Richard Royal, Conservative parliamentary candidate for Hartlepool, has backed calls for better provision of support for local people in mental health crisis. Mind, the mental health charity, is calling for local services to deliver on their promise to improve the support for people who are suicidal, self-harming or in psychosis. Royal is a former Trustee of Mind and a mental health campaigner who has raised over £3,000 for mental health charities through sponsored swims in r


Hartlepool needs and deserves vital hospital services
I’ve always been impatient. Even before I entered the world. My first act was to insist on being born on a busy May Bank Holiday Monday. In my home town of Bridlington, East Yorkshire, the local hospital and its maternity ward did not open for a further nine years, forcing my Mum to suffer the twenty-three mile ambulance journey to Beverley which, even on a good day, would take upwards of 45 minutes. In this case, Bank Holiday traffic made it significantly longer and inevitab