Sean Brogan, of Coombe Vale Road, Teignmouth, writes:

What a scandalous point we have reached! As they continue to cut beds in the NHS in Devon, those who are ejected from hospital face an uncertain world of care. I may be accused of scaremongering but your report in last week’s paper (November 24) has exposed, once more, the inadequacies of the private care companies.

The Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) in Devon are well on the way in closing 400 acute and 190 community beds – home care is supposed to replace these with private companies providing much of this care. The latter’s failures have been laid bare by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) and not for the first time. Blame cannot be placed on the workers in these organisations failed by them – carers overworked – underpaid and under trained.

The fault lies with the CCGs which have bulldozed our beds and community hospitals with sham democracy performances in their so-called ‘consultations’. This has been done in collusion with our county councillor – refusing to refer to Secretary of State Hunt and abstaining, claiming dubious conflict of interest. Where is our MP on this? – almost total silence!

We have been told that everything is working ‘fine and dandy’ but no clinical evidence of outcome from the CCGs has been given to back this – is this fake news or dark spin?

What we need is proper and not anecdotal clinical evidence. To obtain at least some clinical evidence, carers, relatives and patients are invited to fill in a survey as to their experiences for those who have left hospital since 2013.

The confidential survey can be found at https://sur veys.sohs.org.uk/ – it is run by Save Our Health Services Devon (SoHs).

In the meantime our banner ought to state ‘Our NHS is not for sale – give us back our community hospitals, wards and beds’.

Please join us at The Plains, Totnes at 11am tomorrow, to march and demonstrate for NHS, The Plains, Totnes, 11am.