IT is very surprising that the recent consultation material on the Herefordshire Core Strategy has minimal mention of health services and none of the potential impact of the proposed 16,500 additional homes, equating to a town the size of Hereford city, added on to an ageing population on the demand for hospital services.

We hear that although our rightly praised ambulance crews are working in a rising demand situation.

Patients have been taken off ambulances and placed to wait in hospital corridors.

It appears that Hereford County Hospital is running out of room. In February urgent care activity was operating above optimum levels every day, with 12 days significantly over capacity.

An overspend of £8 million on adult social care is reported.

A transformation in services is advocated to reduce over reliance on acute hospital care and placement in care homes.

Meanwhile the very future of the County Hospital in its present form is in question.

I have frequently asked for hard evidence that the hospital services will be able to cope with the increased demand.

Answers from the council have been bland, generalised reassurances along the lines described of redesigning community services, rehabilitation and prevention and use of paramedic care to provide alternatives to hospitals closer to home.

In response to my question at the March 8 council meeting Cllr Hamilton accused me of being “simplistic”.

With more than 40 years of experience in social care, including hospital discharge, I have no doubts that these ambitions are laudable.

Where possible, alternatives to inpatient treatment are preferable.

I also understand the enormous contribution, both long and short term, made by family members to provide support for safe discharges.

I note this is often from people in their 60s, and women of all ages, who now have significantly more pressure to remain in full-time work.

If indeed the money is forthcoming to pay for services in the community instead of at the hospital – not necessarily cheap or easy to staff, nor in austere times is the money necessarily forthcoming – I am still unconvinced that the hospital services will cope with the demand for unavoidable use of A& E, elective and emergency surgery, maternity, other unavoidable admissions and outpatients services.

No one is prepared to provide evidence in facts and figures of projected need, or any indication that serious discussion with the hospital about the proposed population expansion has been undertaken At my age I may have reason in my coming years to be grateful for flashing blue lights, but suspect that flashing red lights for the years ahead are being ignored as we sleepwalk into a major problem.

CAROLE PROTHEROUGH, Birch Hill, Clehonger.