KIRKLEES health bosses have vowed to improve communication with the public and denied they blanked Holme Valley councillors last year.
At January’s Holme Valley South Area Committee meeting last week, PCT chief, Mike Potts, said the reason the ‘big guns’ demanded by Clr Nigel Patrick had failed to attend the previous meeting was simply a crossing of wires.
At the meeting in November 2007, councillors were expecting long-awaited answers to their concerns over developments at the site of the Holme Valley Memorial Hospital.
But they were left disappointed when the PCT representative attending was not in possession of the relevant information.
Mr Potts said: “Contrary to what it said in the Holme Valley Express, we did not snub the councillors.
“We thought the issue over the use of land behind the hospital was sorted.”
Mr Potts, who said he had met up with two of the councillors after seeing the newspaper report, thought the £3m re-vamp of the Hawthorn ward within the hospital was the matter for discussion, and the spokeswoman that had attended had been thoroughly briefed on that matter and not on the parking concerns and the use of the land by private developers.
But furious Holme Valley residents attacked the way the sale of the land and the development had been handled.
One said to Mr Potts: “It’s not your hospital it’s our hospital. It was built by the people of the valley for the people of the valley.”
The man went on to accuse health executives of dishonesty and dubbed the organisation the ‘NHS mistrust’.
In response Mr Potts said: “I realise that there’s no trust and it’s up to us to effectively communicate with you.”
