PROPOSALS for new health services – including a replacement for the Dilke and Lydney Hospitals – will go before the people of the Forest later this year. 

The board of the Gloucestershire Care Services NHS Trust – which runs the two hospitals and other community services – gave its support to the Case for Change document. 

This sets out the need for improvements to the health services in the district, although it excludes the area around Newent which falls under the Tewkesbury district. 

Speaking at a board meeting held at The Main Place in Coleford last Thursday (July 20), the trust’s chief executive Katie Norton said: “This is a really important document for us. 

“It is putting into full gear the ability for us to put forward some very good proposals about how we feel we can improve our offer and deliver really great services in the Forest of Dean. 

“The Case for Change is the document that enables us to develop options about how we respond. It will set out the context for those proposals that will be subject to full public consultation. 

“This is said from the heart of GCS: we are immensely proud of the health services we are providing in the Forest of Dean and the colleagues who are supporting those services. 

“However, we recognise that we need to invest in new infra-

structure to support that on-going provision and, within our thinking, we need to be mindful of the unique geography and needs of the local population and we think some of the models we have been developing through the joint work will have huge resonance.”

The trust’s director of nursing, Sue Field, also paid tribute to staff in the Forest. 

She said: “Patients get a good experience but we have got to the stage where they could have an even better experience.   

“The staff do an amazingly good job and the teams work well, the integrated community teams and the teams in the hospitals.”

The board will now instruct officials to work up options that will be put out to public consultation later this year. 

Trust chair Ingrid Barker said: “We have an amazing locality here and amazing communities with some real assets in those communities around their engagement and their commitment to the place and pride in the heritage and history of the current hospitals. 

“We have to build on that and we have an amazing opportunity to create something that we can do jointly with local people, with other partners in primary care (GPs) and mental health and with the acute (general hospitals) trust, to do something where the sum of the parts adds up to more and to do something really exciting.”