11/10/2024
Please take a look at our Final Statement about the Ambulance Campaign. Despite our best efforts and full community support NWAS downgraded our service.
Save Alston Moor's Ambulance
Our ambulance is under threat again. The North West Ambulance Service, who run our service want to take it away again.
10/10/2024
https://acrobat.adobe.com/id/urn:aaid:sc:EU:eb26a148-37dc-49ad-b098-7af645c9bc5f
A STATEMENT FROM MEMBERS OF THE
‘SAVE ALSTON MOOR’S SERVICES’ CAMPAIGN GROUP
12/11/2022
In solidarity......
NURSES PAY AND CONDITIONS
Over the next few weeks there will be a lot of bad press fired at nurses and many who work within the NHS. For those who don’t work in healthcare, I wanted to help give some facts and context in support of my nursing friends/colleagues:
- In 2022/23, a newly qualified nurse will leave University with an average student debt of £50k.
- Their starting salary in the NHS will be £27,055.
- They will pay mandatory £120 for NMC registration to practice every year.
- They will pay between £200-500/yr in parking fees (depending on Trust) before even stepping through the front door.
- They will pay £15-£20/month for Union membership and professional indemnity.
- Their breaks are unpaid. They have 2x 30 minute breaks per long-day (13 hour shift) - if they can take them!
- 9% of their gross salary will be taken each month in student loan repayments. It is now estimated most nurses will never pay their student loans off in full under the new loans system, meaning this 9% deduction will continue for the majority of their professional lives until it is written off after 30 years.
- After adjustment for inflation, despite the most recent pay deal, nurse’s real wages have dropped by £1583 on average per year since 2011. Nursing pay bands are worth an average 11% less than they were a decade ago.
- There are currently thousands of vacancies across the country for nursing jobs, due to years of underinvestment and under recruitment, costing approximately £6 billion/yr in expensive agency staff.
- An independent study found a 10% pay rise to nursing staff would pay for itself through greater tax income from higher wages, and by reducing the amount of student loans needing to be written off.
- Another study found for every extra patient a nurse is asked to look after beyond a safe amount, the risk of harm increases by 7%. I have often seen nurses looking after patients on a ratio of 12:1. A safe amount would be considered 5:1. Do the maths.
Nurses are not greedy. They worked through a grueling pandemic to keep you and your loved ones safe. Over 850 healthcare workers are estimated to have died over the pandemic. Nurses have lost colleagues and family members to COVID-19.
Please support nurses in the weeks to come and don’t listen to Government propaganda. The recent pay deal amounted to a pay cut in real terms. It is not right that a nurse (or anyone!) should be afraid to put on the heating, or be forced to go to a food bank to provide food for their families.
Copied and pasted. Not my words. Please share on your page
Support nursing
Support fair pay
Support patient safety
09/05/2022
SAMS has just met up with a journalist from the I newspaper who is taking up our cause. So look out for the article and hopefully more of the nationals will take it up too.
Thanks Elaine and Co for the use of the back room at the Nook
03/03/2022
AMBULANCE NEWS
Despite the extremely hard work of the working group, the EMTs and SAMS, the Ambulance Service still havent agreed to give us the same service as other parts of their area receive.
We have managed to stop them making the Emergency Medical Technicians redundant and they are now starting to negotiate with them. However, the next downgrade they can think of is.....they want to now take away the ambulance and give us an estate car and a tent.
A TENT! Can you imagine in our weather a pop up tent with a patient in it. They will have to call the Fire Brigade to rescue the tent and patient from up a tree or taking a trip across the Moor!!
So folks.... the upshot is..... we need to do more..... we need everyone to get involved. And after all, this does affect everyone of us. If your relative or friend or if you are in an accident, or need urgent medical support you know that you will need our ambualnce and crew.
PLEASE HELP.
We need you to write to people of influence and the press. We need you to share our news with all your friends and neighbours and we need you to come out and support us when NWAS come here to a public meeting.
We have created a website with the latest news on and a Toolkit where you can find all you need to help us. We have uploaded 6 sample letters that you can download and edit to send to important people. We have added a contacts list so you can find the addresses of these people easily (we will be adding to it)
So please for the sake of every soul on the Moor please act!! Please do something.
https://999alstonmoor.com/toolkit
PM us if you need any help of it you have ideas that can support us.
Please share this news to your own page too.
16/11/2021
How a lethal mix of NHS privatisation and lack of resources led to a prominent doctor's death
'An uber or deliveroo driver could have made it to his home within minutes, so why couldn't an ambulance?' asked Dr Chand's son.