Well I wasn't supposed to be attending tonight as Emyr was down for the slot but owing to last minute illness I stepped into the breach. I hadn't been to the A55 Corridor forum before and so wasn't certain what to expect and to be honest I enjoyed the night as the audience had a good range of questions and certainly challenged those of us who were fortunate enough to be asked questions. The main issues of the evening centred around the local hospital Ysbyty Glan Clwyd and questions around the performance of the hospital and the refurbishment plans and the traffic issues in St Asaph and whether lorries should be encouraged "advised" to travel on the Lower Denbigh road instead of Upper Denbigh road. In the case of the traffic situation there is to be a pilot programme for 12 months to measure the impact of encouraging lorries to travel along Lower Denbigh Road. The fact is that the only real issue is for a relief road to be built but that costs money and takes time neither of which was in the gift of Mohammad (CEO of Denbighshire County Council) tonight. However the fact the Council are shortly conducting a review of St Asaph the question of traffic congestion can be included and as ever if the County Council, Town Council and residents are able to agree on a common strategy them maybe the weight of that strong united voice will persuade Taith ( the transport agency) to move ahead with the relief road much I suspect to the relief of everyone in St Asaph.
The hospital issue is equally complex as you would expect with any large acute hospital that operates 24/7 covering a wide geographical area. Geoff Lang, Director responsible for Primary Care explained what the new Betsi Cadwaladr Health Board was doing to address the performance issues i.e. long waiting times and these waiting times for some patients include waiting outside the hospital in the ambulance until there is room in A&E , for others waiting in A&E to be seen by a doctor and then finally waiting to be admitted on to the ward. Not easy issues against a backdrop of budget difficulties and as we all know we are still working our way out of a recession and have been told that budgets will be under pressure in future years and so it is anyone's guess what the level of cuts might be in future years . Figures of 10% to 15% were mentioned tonight for local government but who can say until after the election.
On balance what struck me about tonight's session is that if the problems were that easy to solve then we wouldn't need the forums. Its because these issues are complex we really do need to talk things through and work up a plan. There is a saying that for wicked / complex problems there will only be clumsy solutions namely there will never be a perfect answer because inevitably as you start to fix the problem in one area you create an issue in another part hence the clumsy solution namely you do the very best you can to address the problem with the least discomfort and irritation to the customers. This won't please everyone . I will leave you with this thought that if there was a perfect solution that satisfied everyone all the time don't you think that the Chief Executive's and Director's would pounce on the solution and implement it straight away if only to show how effective their administration was - nobody likes attending meetings to hear that their service is failing its customers, it goes against the public service ethos that every public service officer believes in otherwise they would have opted out of public service years ago and gone to work elsewhere.
And finally - please ask your friends and colleagues to attend future meetings. Remember there are five more events across the County this month and we are genuinely pleased to meet you all because if we start to talking through the concerns you have in your area the sooner that something that can be done.
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