Seaton and Colyton’s new County Councillor, Martin Shaw, has launched an urgent community crowdfunding appeal to support a judicial review of the decision to close Seaton Hospital’s beds. Councillor Shaw says: “Solicitors are preparing a letter before action to send to the NEW Devon Clinical Commissioning Group by the end of this week, giving the case why their decision-making was unflawed. However Seaton Town Council has decided that it cannot underwrite the costs of this first stage of judicial review. The Hospital League of Friends are prevented by their constitution from underwriting them, but they have opened a special bank account and a BT MyDonate site to collect funds for a review. Cllr Shaw said
“I have therefore decided to launch an urgent appeal to raise the £20,000 needed to fund this first stage of a review, and I am asking everyone in the area who cares about the hospital keeping its beds to donate this weekend so that I can go to the solicitors on Monday morning and say that we have the funds to take this forward. I am putting in £1000 of my own money and I will use the rest of my councillor’s allowance of £10,000 to underwrite this campaign while donations come in. However we need donations, large and small, in the next 48 hours, if we are going to be able to proceed on Monday.”
The Seaton Hospital and District League of Friends fundraising site is at https://mydonate.bt.com/donation/start.html?charity=129867 and in order to donate for judicial review, you must write ‘judicial review’ in the ‘personalise your donation’ box. It is also important that you email Cllr Shaw cllrmartinshaw@gmail.com to inform him of your donation, so that he knows how much money has been raised.
IF you want to do this you need to act NOW.