Milton view Let’s carry on posting

Dear editor, This month (July) marks four years since consumer choice campaign, Keep Me Posted launched.

Keep Me Posted was started to challenge companies who push their customers to receive electronic communication, without their consent, sometimes without their knowledge.

Our research has proven that it is easier to assess your financial health when you receive paper statements (75%) compared to (48%) electronic statements.

Thanks to the valuable information and feedback we have received from your readers, we have been able to persuade parliamentarians, large corporations, service providers and banks that everyone should have the right to receive their financial information in the format that is easiest for them – be it text, paper, email or a combination of all three.

As a result, 29 service providers, including a number of high street banks, have been awarded the Keep Me Posted Mark of Distinction in recognition of their commitment to consumer choice.

This means that millions of people across the country can rest assured that they will not be forced to receive electronic communication or penalised for requesting a hard copy of statements or bills.

I am incredibly proud of what the campaign has achieved over the past four years. However, the battle is not over - we must continue to fight to ensure that our rights are honoured by companies.

We ask your readers to do the same. Together we can stop organisations overlooking our wishes or taking our custom for granted.

Let us know your experiences by writing us at: FREEPOST KEEP ME POSTED.

Judith Donovan CBE Keep Me Posted campaign Dear Editor,

The school summer holiday is a time children look forward to all year – a time for them to relax, enjoy the outdoors and get stuck into their favourite hobbies.

It’s easy to see how routines can go out of the window once summer hits, which is why Asthma UK are launching a campaign urging parents to maintain their child’s usual preventer medicine routine over the school break.

This will help to protect their child from an asthma attack both during the summer holiday and once they go back to school.

Every 10 seconds someone has a potentially life-threatening asthma attack in the UK, and three people die from an asthma attack every day.

In September, children are nearly three times more likely to be admitted to hospital because of an asthma attack than in August, partly due to seasonal triggers such as cold and flu viruses.

If a child hasn’t kept up their preventer medicine routine over the school holidays, they will be at greater risk of reacting to these triggers.

The good news is that by taking a few simple steps over the summer holiday, parents can keep children as well as possible and reduce the risk of this happening:

Keep up your child’s usual preventer medicine routine (usually a brown inhaler)

Make sure your child has an up to date written asthma action plan and share this with any other carers; people with asthma are four times more likely to end up in hospital for their asthma if they don’t use one

Track your child’s asthma symptoms using a diary or a symptom calendar

Prep for going back to school by arranging an asthma review to check your child’s medicines, and make sure your child has spare, in-date reliever inhalers to take into school.

Parents who have any concerns about their child’s asthma can speak to our team of expert nurses by calling the Asthma UK Helpline on 0300 222 5800 (Mon-fri; 9am-5pm), and can download a child’s asthma action plan by visiting www.asthma.org.uk/ advice/safer-school-holidays.

Sonia Munde, Head of Helpline and Nurse Manager at Asthma UK