"Standing Up For South Gloucestershire" Campaigners Welcome Reprieve For Local Health Trust

12.00.00am UTC (GMT +0000) Tue 16th May 2006

Liberal Democrat campaigners in South Gloucestershire are today celebrating the news that plans to abolish the area's Primary Care Trust have been ditched by the Government following a storm of local protest. The Lib Dem-led "standing up for South Gloucestershire" campaign had argued that the area needed its own health trust to make sure that the area's particular health needs were not swallowed up in a new "Greater Bristol" health trust.

They also told ministers that joint working between South Gloucestershire Council and South Gloucestershire Primary Care Trust was producing good results in providing better care, especially for people needing both health care and social care. There had been fears that this advice was to be ignored as the Strategic Health Authority recommended to the Government that the four PCTs serving Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire should still be merged.

But today in the House of Commons, health minister Andy Burnham issued a statement showing that the Government had decided in favour of keeping separate health trusts for South Gloucestershire, Bristol (merging only the existing Bristol North and Bristol South & West PCTs) and North Somerset.

Steve Webb, the Lib Dems health spokesman, who responded to the statement in the House of Commons, said:

"This is a very welcome announcement, and a victory for the "Standing up for South Gloucestershire" campaign. At long last, the Government has recognised that we are not simply a suburb of Greater Bristol, we are an area in our own right with our own needs and priorities.

"The good news is that our local health staff can get on with the job of improving patient care instead of being distracted by yet another round of reorganisations. I congratulate everyone who took part in the campaign and who made their views known".