BEDS - End corridor care in A and E

03/04/2026

This is a great place to field a question about Maesteg Hospital to those Senedd Candidates who look to represent you in May
7 Candidates have already confirmed their attendance, and are looking forward to answering questions

03/04/2026

Wales is beyond safe bed limits. Patients are paying the price in corridor care

As we reach April and start looking at end‑of‑year finances, we already know that BCUHB is facing a deficit of £89 million. Large amounts of this may be due to hiring expensive agency staff, outsourcing to private care because post‑op recovery beds are unavailable in NHS hospitals, paying for weekend locum clinics where doctors cannot access hospital computer systems so weekday hospital doctors have to redo the consultations from scratch, or even settling clinical negligence claims running into the millions.

But how can BCUHB clear this deficit without addressing the root cause of the problem? Social and primary care have suffered years of chronic underinvestment, and Wales simply doesn’t have enough hospital beds.

The Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM) cites that when more than 85% of beds in a medical facility are occupied, the situation becomes unsafe. The risks of patients acquiring infections, chaotic handovers between staff teams, and stressed staff missing signs that things are going wrong all increase to a level that puts the most vulnerable at risk. It also causes the overflow we’ve all seen in hospital corridors, cupboards and waiting areas. For Critical Care such as ICU, the safe occupancy threshold is even lower, at around 65–75%.

In Wales, average bed occupancy is 86.3%. Audit Wales notes that bed occupancy here has consistently been above safe levels since 2012. This is not a new issue, but it is a growing one.

The King’s Fund tells us that around 20% of the Welsh population is over 65, but they account for around two‑thirds of hospital bed days, and by 2036, demand for hospital beds is expected to increase by around 20%. Meanwhile, Wales has half the average number of beds as other OECD countries, and beds and services in community hospitals continue to be closed even to this day.

In Tywyn and Penley, years of feedback forms, public engagements and balance‑room exercises have hit yet more delay in the election purdah pause. Meanwhile, beds in Maesteg closed during COVID never to be reopened, and local people have had to fight just to get honest information about the hospital’s future. In Bridgend, patients have lived through the chaos of wards and theatres closing while a rotten roof at Princess of Wales Hospital was repaired, leaving many anxious about the long‑term future of local emergency care. At the same time, people across the Cwm Taf Morgannwg area are watching closely as decisions are made about services at their main hospitals, worried that any “reconfiguration” could mean fewer fully staffed emergency departments when they need them most.

Patients in Powys and Carmarthenshire travel hours at a time and spend hundreds of pounds on overnight accommodation for routine appointments that are unreachable by public transport. Meanwhile, new West Wales hospitals are discussed in the same breath as stripping mid Wales stroke services and closing mental health facilities.

The problem is clear. The financial impact of all the quick fixes that haven’t worked is there in black and white on the end‑of‑year statements, and there are treatable patients dying unnecessarily on the corridors of our major hospitals. It’s time to look at what we have, get it opened, and get it working. No more big future promises.

👉 *We want action today. Start with what we have and work outwards. Open the beds. End corridor care.*

This election make sure you ask every candidate what they will do to open our beds and improve working conditions for our frontline staff.

29/03/2026

BBC Politics Wales looks at whether Betsi Cadwaladr health board is simply too big – and what that means for patients stuck on trolleys and in corridors instead of in proper beds. Political candidates and hopefuls set out their plans and “solutions”, but our BEDS campaign will keep pushing until words turn into real extra beds, reopened community wards and an end to corridor care.

With Mark Drakeford MS, Mabon ap Gwynfor MS from Plaid Cymru, Francesca O'Brien from Reform UK, Tom Giffard MS from the Welsh Conservatives and Calum Higgins from Welsh Labour.

29/03/2026

🗳️ Election season is here – but let’s not forget the beds.

The election is coming. With the pre‑election period (“purdah”) in place, discussion of “tricky” issues like community hospitals and services at risk of closure or downgrading often goes quiet. Consultations are paused, feedback is muted and attention turns to glossy manifestos and big promises.

At BEDS – End Corridor Care, we are not politically affiliated. We look at one area of government policy: safe, staffed beds and an NHS that does not leave patients in corridors. So here is our advice on what to look out for before you vote.

1️⃣ Are the promises realistic?

Whether we like it or not, global affairs and wider pressures on public spending are about to have a major impact on the UK budget as a whole – and on Wales in particular. Are headline‑grabbing, big‑money promises likely to happen, or do we need to look for smaller, more cost‑effective and practical commitments that can actually be delivered in this Senedd term?

2️⃣ Who is thinking about the facilities we already have?

Across Wales, pressure on big hospitals is rising while existing local capacity is being squandered. In BCUHB alone, there are fully functional inpatient wards under “temporary closure”, and in other parts of Wales wards and community hospitals have been stripped back or closed, only to be replaced with promises of future “hubs” or “health centres”. Which candidates are serious about reopening and safely staffing the beds and services we already have, easing the bottleneck that leads to ambulance delays and corridor care?

3️⃣ Staffing, staffing, staffing.

Poor workforce planning and unappealing offers to the rural and community workforce have left major healthcare deserts across parts of Wales, while staff in larger hospitals are working under relentless daily pressure. Doctors and nurses are telling us that unsafe staffing, burnout and pay erosion are driving people away from the NHS, making it even harder to recruit and retain the workforce we need. Which parties are offering a credible long‑term workforce plan, better conditions, and a real strategy to value and keep the staff who hold NHS Wales together? Without staff, there is no NHS.

4️⃣ Are existing funds being directed where they will actually help flow?

We hear a lot about “care closer to home” and “hospital at home”, but without the staff, community capacity and social care support, these schemes risk becoming expensive slogans rather than solutions. We need to see parties prioritising primary care, community beds and step‑down care – the services that keep people well, free up acute beds and genuinely reduce pressure on A&E and corridors. Ask candidates how they will shift resources into these areas now, not in ten years’ time.

5️⃣ Who is holding health boards to account?

From “health board border” politics that send patients hours from home, to serious concerns about finances, data and governance, it can feel as if health boards across Wales are a law unto themselves. All seven boards are now under some form of escalation or enhanced monitoring for issues like planning, finance and emergency care, yet the public still struggles to see who is actually in charge when things go wrong.

We have seen independent board members removed or asked to step aside while questions about leadership, culture and spending remain, despite formal Welsh Government procedures for managing and even removing non‑officer board members. If an organisation can sit under intervention for years, rack up deficits and preside over poor performance while civil servants move posts and boards are reshuffled, then voters are entitled to ask: who are these people answerable to, and how is the public interest being defended?

👉 When candidates knock your door, talk about beds, staffing, accountability and realistic planning – not just slogans. Every safe, staffed bed counts. It is time to end corridor care in Wales.

28/03/2026

“When you close community beds, you don’t save money — you create chaos in A&E.”

Retired Consultant Surgeon Jonathan Osborne, former Consultant at Ysbyty Glan Clwyd, explains how stripping community hospital beds and services has devastated A&Es across Wales and why this failing policy must now be reversed.

There is an election coming. Your vote is your leverage.
Ask every candidate, from every party, one clear question:

👉 “Exactly what will you do to reverse centralised care and put services and beds back into our communities?”

Don’t accept waffle. Don’t accept warm words. Get concrete commitments – and only give your vote to those who will restore safe, local care.

21/03/2026

Let’s talk about what it really costs to strip care from our communities.

We’ve all seen what it costs us in A&E waiting rooms and along the corridors of our major hospitals in Wales: hours on plastic chairs, trolleys lined up head‑to‑toe, whispered conversations in public spaces when people are at their most vulnerable. There have been national headlines and hidden‑camera exposés showing scenes that should shame any government into action. Staff tell us this is nowhere near a “Never Event”. It’s a daily expectation.

But there is another cost that rarely makes the headlines or even surfaces fully in Senedd debates.

It is the cost of routine healthcare in communities that no longer have any – because they were the first to feel the healthcare wasteland spreading quietly across rural Wales. Older people, disabled people, carers and low‑income families now have to travel miles for appointments that used to be delivered in their local hospitals and clinics.

We have permission to share the real story of a couple in their late eighties / early nineties in south Meirionnydd.

In Tywyn, one gentleman recently spent over four hours simply trying to rearrange appointments for himself and his wife at Ysbyty Gwynedd. To attend an appointment at 08:00 on a Saturday, they must leave Tywyn on the Friday. They have to go by train because there are no lavatories on the T2 buses and the journey is almost four hours. His wife’s appointment is on the Sunday. She is over 90 and will not be able to travel until the Monday after an eye procedure.

That means three nights in a hotel and four days of food.

The overall cost is £920.

He has asked if it is possible to reclaim any of this, but has been told he cannot – even though on paper there is an NHS travel cost scheme for some patients on low incomes and certain benefits. And here’s the worst part: they will have to go through it all again when they are called for their operations – taking the total to around £1,840, just under 20% of his annual pension.

This is what “centralisation” looks like when you’re living it, not writing it in a policy document. This is what closing community beds, hollowing out local hospitals and stripping out routine clinics really means in human terms. It is not “more efficient use of resources”. It is older people choosing between their sight and their heating. It is families deciding whose appointment they can afford to attend this month. It is carers exhausting themselves navigating rail timetables and hotel bookings just to receive care that used to be available close to home.

And whether we want to think about it or not, those travel costs are only going one way. Fuel prices, rail fares and the fragility of rural bus routes all make the journey to “centralised” care harder and more expensive. Patients across south Gwynedd, Powys, Carmarthenshire and Pembrokeshire already face long, costly journeys for routine healthcare, with little in the way of improved public transport or meaningful help with travel costs.

Imagine this was your grandparents. Your parents. You.

Because if it isn’t already, the continued stripping of community services means that very soon it might be.

This is the hidden side of corridor care. When you rip beds and services out of communities, people don’t just magically appear in major hospitals. They have to get there. They have to find the money, the time, the transport, the overnight stays and the courage to make journeys that are exhausting and frightening – especially when you’re already unwell.

Help us fight back.

There is an election looming. Right now, leaders are listening the hardest, and the power of our united voices is at its strongest. This is the moment to say clearly that this is not the kind of health service we are willing to accept.

Let’s demand that every party:

- Ends cuts to community beds and core services
- Sets out a real plan to restore beds and clinics in our communities
- Improves conditions and pay for frontline staff so they can stay and thrive in the NHS
- Invests in workforce planning so rural areas get the staffing they need and deserve
- Takes care out of major hospital corridors and brings it back into the communities where people live

If you care about ending corridor care, you have to care about what is happening to our community hospitals and local clinics. They are two sides of the same coin. When you close the bed in Tywyn, Builth, Tenby or Llandovery, you lengthen the corridor in Bangor, Carmarthen, Swansea and beyond.

Please share this post. Talk to your neighbours and families. Ask your candidates where they stand on community beds, rural transport and ending corridor care – and don’t accept warm words without clear, costed plans.

This is our NHS. It belongs in our communities. Let’s raise our voices now to bring care back home.

21/03/2026

Beds, Not Corridors. Tywyn Has Spoken.

Thank you to the incredible people of Tywyn who once again turned out to fiercely fight for the future of our 16 fully refurbished, community-funded hospital beds — ‘temporarily’ closed for almost three years.

These are the voices that weren’t allowed into the “balanced room” exercise, but came to the door anyway to make sure they were heard.

And now, we’ll make sure their voices echo far beyond those doors.

Please share this far and wide — let’s shine a light on the fight to save community healthcare in Wales, keep the crisis off our A&E corridors, and let patients recover near home — surrounded by friends, family, calm and dignity.

18/03/2026

The NHS is a public body, paid for and answerable to its stakeholders – the public. Or at least it should be.

TRANSPARENCY SHOULD BE THE BARE MINIMUM in a national health service – but across Wales, health boards are making life‑changing decisions behind a fog of spin, half‑truths and “consultations” that seem designed to exhaust us, not involve us. We are sold “modernisation”, “health and wellbeing hubs” and “care closer to home”; what we actually see is the quiet removal of beds, the downgrading of local hospitals, and longer, more expensive journeys for care – all while being told that no decisions have been made.

Starting in the north, Betsi Cadwaladr insists no decision has been taken on Tywyn Community Hospital – yet Dyfi Ward’s 16 fully refurbished step‑down beds have been closed for years, recruitment has been halted, and the shortlist for the hospital’s future doesn’t even include reopening the inpatient ward. If every route back to local beds has already been excluded, what is left to “consult” on? The 12‑week consultation has been pushed beyond the 2026 Senedd election in the name of “purdah”, while patients do without local step‑down care and staff remain in limbo. At the same time, the chief executive can give upbeat interviews about future “reablement beds” elsewhere, but not face serious questions about corridor care in the main hospitals. That isn’t openness; it’s message management.

Move south‑east into Powys and Mid Wales and the picture is just as troubling, even if the structures look different on paper. Patients are increasingly pushed over the border into England for routine and specialist care, often at huge personal cost in fuel, time off work and accommodation. Serious questions have been raised about how cross‑border waiting times are managed, and whether Welsh patients are being disadvantaged within English systems just so headline “parity” can be maintained. Government press releases boast that long waits are falling; that bears little resemblance to the reality of someone driving hours for a ten‑minute appointment they used to have down the road.

Further south‑west, in Hywel Dda, we see decisions presented as neutral “service change” while communities lose out. Bronglais, the only district general hospital in mid‑west Wales, is set to lose its dedicated stroke unit and become a “treat and transfer” site, meaning patients are moved on to other hospitals for inpatient stroke care when every minute of delay matters. At the same time, Hywel Dda has approved plans to remove emergency general surgery from Withybush in Haverfordwest and centralise it in Glangwili, turning “temporary” transfers due to staffing pressures into permanent downgrades. Local representatives have called this an obsession with stripping Pembrokeshire of services and forcing rural patients to travel far further for life‑saving treatment.

Then, moving east into Cwm Taf Morgannwg, the same pattern plays out again. Publicly, the health board pushes back on “rumours” that Maesteg Community Hospital will be sold. On its own FAQ, it calmly states that “a sale of Maesteg Hospital is the likely outcome should the potential new site be a viable option”, while refusing to reveal that new site “for commercial reasons”. Beds that closed during Covid have never reopened, the town is fobbed off with talk of a future “health and wellbeing centre”, and the historic community hospital that anchored the Llynfi Valley for generations is quietly shifted into the “likely to be sold” column. People marching to save their hospital are not misinformed – they’re reading the small print the board would rather no one noticed.

Even where emergency departments remain open, trust is being eroded. At Princess of Wales Hospital in Bridgend, major roof problems have forced the decant of beds and services, with the council seeking assurances that services – including A&E – will remain on site. The health board insists the hospital is “not for sale” and services will be maintained, but communities in Cwm Taf Morgannwg remember previous attempts to downgrade A&E at Royal Glamorgan and see, yet again, serious incidents and “temporary” changes being used as a route to centralisation. In that context, people are not paranoid for worrying that Princess of Wales could be next in line for a slow, step‑by‑step downgrading of emergency care.

Put together – from Betsi Cadwaladr in the north, through Powys and Hywel Dda in the west, to Cwm Taf Morgannwg in the south – these examples tell one story. Health boards too often start with a decision, then work backwards to build a “consultation” and a communications plan to sell it. They talk up hypothetical new hospitals and hubs that exist only on glossy slides, while glossing over the beds, wards and services already gone. They talk about “listening”, but remove options before the public ever has a real say. And they talk about “parity” and “performance” while patients slip further down waiting lists and further away from the care they need.

Here’s the part they rarely admit: evidence shows that properly funded community beds and strong primary care are among the most cost‑effective ways to care for people and keep pressure off big hospitals in the long term. When you strip out local step‑down beds and undercut GPs and community teams, you don’t save money – you move the bill into packed emergency departments and longer hospital stays. Cutting community beds creates chaos at the front door of the NHS: people who should be in calm local rehab are stuck on trolleys; A&Es become holding bays; staff are left firefighting instead of delivering safe, timely care. Under that pressure, exhausted nurses, doctors and therapists walk away from permanent posts into agency work just to protect their own health, which drains experience from the system and makes the spiral worse. For patients, it means the indignity and danger of corridor care – no privacy, delayed medication, missed diagnoses – all because the cheaper, safer option of community beds has been cut away.

So this can’t just be a rant. It has to be a demand.

Write to your local representatives – MSs, MPs and councillors – and demand a stop to the closure of community beds and local services, and a plan to restore community bed numbers across Wales. Demand real investment in primary and community care so fewer people end up in crisis at A&E in the first place. Demand improved working conditions and staffing in A&E – including senior medics on the shop floor to speed proper triage – so patients are treated, not parked in corridors. And demand full transparency from every health board: honest data on bed numbers, waiting times, escalation levels and outcomes, not just cherry‑picked statistics that make them look good.

Because if a health board can sit in special measures for seven out of ten years, still miss basic targets and still pump out glossy “success” stories about its performance, we have to ask: who is really in charge of our services – and where is the accountability to the people of Wales who pay for and depend on this NHS every single day?

18/03/2026

Firstly, thank you to the team at Y Byd ar Bedwar on S4C for an incredibly powerful and important documentary exposing “corridor care” in North Wales’ hospitals under Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board.

This episode offers the public a rare, unfiltered look at what is happening in our Emergency Departments right now – patients lined up on trolleys in corridors for hours on end, staff describing crisis conditions as “normal”, and almost 89,000 people treated in non‑clinical spaces between 2022 and October 2025 in Betsi hospitals alone.

What’s disheartening is that, despite every effort to make a fair and balanced programme, both Betsi Cadwaladr Health Board and the governing party in the Senedd refused to be interviewed – even as an experienced intervention team and “special measures” are being used in North Wales, supposedly to improve care and transparency.

We ask again: where is the transparency? Where is the ownership? Where is the basic understanding that our health service is a public service that belongs to the people of Wales, not to distant managers or politicians?

WHO do these people answer to, if not the public and the national press?

If you haven’t seen it yet, please watch and share Y Byd ar Bedwar’s investigation here:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/p03nsyq8/y-byd-ar-bedwar

And if you believe patients deserve a bed, not a corridor, add your voice to our campaign to save and expand local community hospital beds.

Watch the latest from ITV News - New data shows almost 89,000 patients were treated in non-clinical environments in recent years at hospitals run by Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board.

15/03/2026

14/03/2026

This is not about blaming staff – they are doing everything they can in impossible conditions. We owe it to them, and to patients, to start having honest conversations about corridor care, centralisation and the loss of community beds. If you care about our NHS and the people working in it, please watch this and share.