THE FOREST Council will add its weight to a campaign to get English NHS patients who are registered with Welsh GPs their right to be get hospital treatment where they choose.

Some 8,000 people living along the border in Gloucestershire are on the lists of doctors registered in Wales which has led to disputes with a Welsh health board over hospital treatment.

People living in England should be treated according to the NHS Constitution with choice over which hospital to be treated in and access to certain drugs.

A 'protocol' between the Aneurin Bevan Health Board and the NHS in England means English residents have to get prior approval from the board to be treated in English hospital.

The campaign to get English rights for English residents has been led by Forest-based group Action4OurCare whose chair, Pam Plummer, asked the Forest of Dean District Council to support the campaign.

Mrs Plummer told the council: "Patients stated overwhelmingly at our public meeting last year that they like their Welsh-registered GPs and all they want is their legal entitlement to be treated under the NHS Constitution like the rest of England because the law overrides the current protocol.

"As our democratically elected representatives in the Forest of Dean, will the district council ensure that the protracted negotiations between NHS Wales and NHS England do not further delay the implementation of the legal health care rights of 8,000 Forest of Dean residents by urging, in writing both collectively and individually if so minded, NHS England to provide the GPs with the resources they need to implement the law for English residents?"

The council's Cabinet member for Community, Cllr Terry Hale, said the council would write to the NHS.

He said: "We will follow up with those letters and do anything we can to support you."

The issue of cross-border health arrangements has again been discussed in Parliament with MPs being told that people living in England but on the books of Welsh-registered GPs are 'a hidden group'.

But Caroline Smith, the Gloucestershire Clinical Commissioning Group's senior manager for engagement and inclusion said getting English patients their rights would be top of the 'wish list'.

Although a Gloucestershire GP had extended the boundary to take in the border area, very few patients had transferred, the committee was told.

She said: "Mainly the issue is access because they have a branch surgery of a Welsh practice within a 10-minute walk as opposed to an eight or nine mile drive.

"The local health board (on the Welsh side) have put in arrangements which means our residents can access secondary care with prior approval to selected hospitals and that has resolved some of the issues around choice but not all of them.

"We are trying to put processes in place – they are almost a hidden group and not something you would immediately think about if you were putting in changes around commun."