BEDS - End corridor care in A and E

30/07/2026

The North Wales Press has reported that Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board now has the highest number of “never events.”

A “never event” is a serious, preventable incident in healthcare — something that should not happen if the right systems, staffing, and safeguards are in place.

But these events do not happen in isolation. They are often a sign of a system under extreme strain.

That strain is being driven by ongoing decisions to centralise services and remove the community beds and local support systems that help hospitals function safely. Without those stepping-stone services, hospitals become overwhelmed, discharge is delayed, and risks increase.

Despite this, BCUHB is still moving ahead with cuts.

Today, they are debating the future of a 20-bed, state-of-the-art inpatient ward in Tywyn — a facility designed to help patients recover and return home safely.

In Wrexham, a rapid discharge unit is working under pressure to free up hospital beds, yet fully costed and staffed plans for rehabilitation beds in Penley — led by the Rainbow Foundation, specialists in this kind of care — have been ignored. Even more concerning, proposals for new inpatient beds have been blocked from public consultation.

This is not sustainable. The system cannot absorb any more pressure without consequences.

This needs to stop.

Please take action:

• Write to your representatives via writetothem.com
• Demand an immediate halt to community bed closures in Wales
• Share this message to raise awareness in our communities

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn8n4396zj1o

Bosses at the health board say they are "committed" to improving processes to avoid future issues.

30/07/2026

Yesterday’s Betsi Cadwaladr Health Board’s AGM left serious questions about accountability, transparency, and the future of local services in Tywyn and South Meirionnydd.

The public were invited to submit questions in advance, yet when those questions were raised, there was no real opportunity for answers. Instead, people were told to be more careful with their wording, more respectful in how they asked, and to accept that questions could not be answered. That is not accountability. It is avoidance.

For Tywyn, this was especially frustrating. Representatives from the area were told that no questions would be answered because another meeting was taking place the following day and decisions still had not been made. Communities that have already waited too long for clarity should not be brushed aside like this.

BCUHB remains under intense scrutiny, yet the AGM did little to reassure the public that the board understands the scale of the challenge. Rural communities need straight answers about staffing, recruitment, and service delivery. They do not need vague assurances or managed messaging.

There is also a wider issue here about the direction of Welsh healthcare. In rural Wales, people can live long distances apart, with limited transport and major workforce pressures. More care in the community must be realistic, properly funded, and built around the actual needs of patients and staff.

Write to your representatives via writetothem.com using your postcode to demand an end to the closure of community beds. These beds help patients return home safely and reduce pressure on overflowing hospitals. Like and share our posts, look out for our upcoming A&E petition, and keep raising your voice.

Community is power — mewn un llais.

29/07/2026

We are now approaching 100 days of the new Senedd, and BCUHB is still bottoming out on A&E performance. We were promised oversight, yet North Wales patients are still being failed, while the board continues to hide behind process, excuses, and public relations.

Today’s livestream AGM and Q&A showed exactly what many of us already know: when the public asks direct questions, the board finds reasons not to answer them.

BCUHB has been in and out of special measures for most of the last decade, and now, after yet another intervention, the question remains the same: where is the oversight, and where does the buck stop?

On 15 August, 100 days of the new Senedd will have passed. We demand action, not more excuses. North Wales patients deserve accountability, transparency, and a health board that is fit to serve the public.

The region's emergency care departments also continue to face significant delays - https://ebx.sh/DCGsoI

20/06/2026

We welcome the new Senedd’s focus on the emergency department at Ysbyty Glan Clwyd. It is deeply worrying that, only a few years after the damning HIW report into the same department, there appear to be no long-term, consistent improvements to safety or culture.

We know frontline staff are working incredibly hard in intolerable conditions, and they deserve better support. We are pleased to hear that BCUHB is finally looking at increasing staffing in A&E, and we hope this will include senior medics in triage so that less obvious but serious complications are not missed by junior clinicians working under pressure without adequate support or facilities.

However, this crisis cannot be fixed by tinkering at the edges of the emergency department. Without a serious, system-wide increase in bed capacity and step‑down care, corridors will remain full and emergency clinicians will continue to be unable to reach the sickest patients in time. Safe discharge options and social care for people who cannot return home are essential if flow through A&E is ever going to improve.

BCUHB now needs to answer some very clear questions:

- What are the plans for the ward at Abergele that will be freed up once the new orthopaedic surgical hub in Llandudno finally opens, given that this development is already delayed beyond original expectations.

- Are there any intentions to return to the original, more ambitious plans for the Rhyl hospital development, which would have significantly increased bed numbers on the site once it opens.

- Will BCUHB end the exhausting, drawn‑out “not yet officially a consultation” process for Tywyn, and commit to staffing the 16 beds that could ease pressure on Dolgellau, instead of continuing with options that permanently remove inpatient beds from the area.

- Will BCUHB allow options that include inpatient beds at Penley before consulting the public on proposals that exclude them altogether.

- Will BCUHB explore repairing and reopening the mothballed ward at Denbigh Infirmary as part of a serious plan to increase capacity across the patch.

Without increased bed capacity and properly funded step‑down and social care, the situation in A&E at Glan Clwyd and across north Wales will remain unsafe and unsustainable, no matter how hard staff work or how many reports are written.

If you share these concerns, please help us make capacity a priority for the new Members of the Senedd now. Write to your SMs (you can find their details at [WriteToThem.com](https://www.writetothem.com)) and contact us for a template letter you can adapt. If we miss your comment or question online, please send us a direct message so we can respond.

Issues at Ysbyty Glan Clwyd's emergency unit include leadership and culture, patient safety and overcrowding

16/06/2026

Closing community beds and services in South Gwynedd is not just an inconvenience — it makes healthcare inaccessible to the most vulnerable when they need it most.

Tywyn has 16 state-of-the-art beds ready and waiting to ease pressure on hospitals across BCUHB and A&E, yet plans continue that could see them lost for good. Endless consultations cannot become a pathway to closure.

We need action, not delay. Help us protect these vital services. Write to your representatives at www.writetothem.com and contact us for a template.

The only real solution to the corridor crisis is restoring step-down care and services within our communities.

09/06/2026

We gave the new Senedd time. Time to settle, to take stock, and to set out credible plans to address the persistent A&E pressures and corridor care crisis affecting North Wales—and now spreading into mid and south-west Wales.

But the crisis has not paused for politics.

This week, Flintshire became the third BCUHB county council—alongside Denbighshire and Conwy—and the fourth in Wales, with Powys, to declare a health emergency. Half of the six local authority areas within BCUHB have now formally sounded the alarm over unsafe and unsustainable conditions for patients and staff.

Yes, social care pressures are a major factor. But that is precisely why greater scrutiny is needed—not less—of what is happening inside Wales’ largest and worst-performing health board.

The new Health and Social Care Secretary, Mabon ap Gwynfor, has announced plans for 600 new GPs, expanded out-of-hours provision, and surgical hubs to tackle waiting lists. These are welcome steps. But they do not address the fundamental blockage in the system: patients who are medically fit to leave hospital but have nowhere safe to go.

Without robust step-down care and reablement services, people remain stuck in hospital beds they neither want nor need—while others wait dangerously in A&E corridors for care.

Across North Wales, communities are being asked to accept fewer local inpatient beds and more fragmented “community solutions” that simply do not match the level of need.

In Tywyn, BCUHB argues that reopening 16 modern inpatient beds would cost a minimal amount more than its current model—one that offers overstretched nurses around 20 minutes a day with vulnerable patients across a wide rural area. Yet nearly half that amount has already been spent on private consultancy, for a process that will not even reach formal consultation until the autumn—more than three years after the beds were “temporarily” closed.

In Penley, credible, workable alternatives put forward by the Rainbow Foundation—experts in reablement already operating on site—have been excluded from consultation. Not one of the board’s proposed options includes inpatient beds.

In Abergele, a ward is due to become available following the opening of the Llandudno surgical hub. Still, there is no confirmation it will be used to relieve the well-documented pressures at Glan Clwyd, just ten minutes away.

And this is not isolated. Hywel Dda and Cwm Taf Morgannwg are following the same path: closing and centralising community beds through drawn-out processes that feel less like genuine consultation and more like attrition.

The faces in government may have changed. The direction of travel has not.

Centralisation has been the dominant strategy for nearly three decades. It has not delivered a resilient system. There is no reason to believe it will start now.

It’s time to step back from the narrow focus on waiting list statistics and look at the whole system. Healthcare does not function in silos. It depends on balance.

Primary care to prevent and manage illness.
Acute care to treat it.
Step-down care to support recovery and independence.

Remove one layer, and the whole structure falters.

Right now, that is exactly what we are seeing: vulnerable patients stranded in hospital, and acutely unwell people unable to access timely care.

Until we rebuild that full pathway—including properly resourced local inpatient and reablement services—this crisis will not resolve. It will deepen.

We need to raise our voices and make sure step-down care is not forgotten.

Write to your representatives today at writetothem.com If you’d like a template, message us and we’ll send one over. If we miss your comment, please get in touch again—this issue matters.

Together, we can keep step-down care at the forefront of decision-makers’ minds.

08/06/2026

Flintshire becomes the third of six districts under the Betsi Cadwaladr Health Board to declare a health emergency.

Flintshire council backs healthcare emergency motion and calls for health board chief to face councillors Share WhatsApp Twitter Facebook Flintshire County Council has backed a motion declaring a ‘healthcare emergency’ in North Wales. The authority will invite the chair and chief executive of Be...

28/05/2026

As consultations reopen on closed and reduced step-down care across Wales, we have real, community-backed solutions on the table — and we need to push to make sure they aren’t ignored.

During the Penley Hospital engagement process, a proposal for a 12 bed step-down and rehabilitation facility emerged strongly from community feedback — potentially in partnership with the Rainbow Foundation, whose work supporting older people’s independence is already valued locally. This model would require no multi-million pound rebuild and could be operational far sooner than any large-scale hospital development. It would relieve pressure on Wrexham Maelor, freeing beds beyond A&E corridors for patients who need more urgent care.
Yet the current BCUHB shortlisted options have ruled out beds entirely.

That is not good enough.

Please contact your representatives today — it takes minutes at writetothem.com — and ask them to push for rehabilitation beds to be reinstated in the system. Patients deserve a safe route home. Our hospitals need the breathing space. And communities like ours deserve solutions that actually work for us.

From left – Susan Ikin of the Rainbow Foundation, Llyr Gruffydd MS and Councillor Marc Jones. Plans to re-open Penley community hospital by ...

27/05/2026

It’s been a strange few weeks as Wales adjusts to the new political scene and gives our new representatives time to settle into their roles. But it seems the purdah pause is well and truly over for our health boards.

The “consultations” postponed during the election are back underway and, as far as we can tell, the direction of travel remains unchanged.

In this week’s stakeholder bulletin from BCUHB, three options for the future of Penley have been announced. Not one includes reopening the inpatient beds.

Meanwhile, in Tywyn, a fourth balanced room has been announced, although none of the previous attendees have received the financial information they requested at the previous meeting, which they felt was imperative before taking a vote on any options for the future of the hospital.

Maesteg has still not been given a clear commitment that community beds will be restored, and the promised health and wellbeing hub has yet to materialise.

In Rhyl, residents are still waiting to see visible construction progress on the promised Royal Alexandra development, including its 14-bed ready-to-go-home reablement unit.

At the same time, the new Cabinet Minister for Health and Care has pledged to cut NHS waiting times and improve access to ambulance and emergency department services - both problems heavily impacted by the lack of available beds across Wales.

So why are health boards continuing to move away from local bed provision?

Help us make the message clear.

Please write to your representatives and help them understand the necessity and urgency of step-down care beds across Wales.

Comment below for a template letter in English or Welsh.

You can find your representatives by entering your postcode at www.writetothem.com.