STILL WAITING

The NHS shake-up and how it would affect west Kent was due to be published in January, but so far nothing has been made available.

Details for neighbouring east Kent have been revealed, but that area of the county began work several years ago when its hospitals got into financial difficulties.

Glenn Douglas, above, chief executive of the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust and leader of the health and care plans in Kent and Medway, said: “We need to transform our services to better meet the changing needs of local people and to make best use of resources.

“We face a huge challenge to adapt the way we work. Over the next five to 10 years we need to save £486 million of predicted future costs and make sure we can deliver high-quality services within available budgets.

“This is a big and complex task and we need some additional short-term capacity, experience and expertise to support the work across multiple organisations that we don’t yet have within our existing teams.”