I WAS both horrified and angry to hear of the problems with “bed blockers” at the Royal Bournemouth Hospital causing delays and cancellations of operations and to long waits for hospital beds.

I seem to remember Mr Spotswood and Mr Renaut both telling the public at various meetings at Christchurch Council offices that the closing of the Care of the Elderly wards at Christchurch Hospital would have very little impact on the community.

With a very high incidence of older residents in this area, almost everyone at these meetings knew differently.

We now hear that patients are being transferred to nursing homes to free up beds – at what sort of cost I wonder, compared with the prospect of opening up winter pressure wards at Christchurch?

However the wards at Christchurch are now being demolished – upon whose orders I wonder? How can the prospect of solving this problem with bed blocking be helped by the current demolition of perfectly adequate wards which could have been easily brought back into use probably on a cost effective basis?

All the public would like to see is a decent health service run for the benefit of the patients.

This type of situation also leads to low morale and the loss of good staff who can no longer cope with the pressures and lack of communication about the future.

CHRISTINE HARRISON, Saxonbury Road, Bournemouth