Hundreds storm out of Pilgrims' Hospice meeting

Hundreds of furious people stormed out of a public meeting with executives and senior staff at the Pilgrims’ Hospice in Canterbury last week.

Tensions ran high throughout the two and a half hour meeting, as hundreds of members of the public, and former healthcare professionals, stood up to oppose the decision to close the Canterbury hospice’s Inpatient Ward in 2016. Many of the crowd had lost family and loved ones in the ward.

Members of the public speaking afterwards were already calling the meeting a “catastrophic failure” for the executives, with little to no evidence that anyone was convinced by their arguments.

Hundreds of people stormed out of the meeting when Doctor Richard Morey, the chair of the hospice’s Board of Trustees, told the assembled crowd that they were treating the meeting as “mostly a presentation; an opportunity for us to explain to you what our views are”, as opposed to a public consultation to change plans going forward.

Vicki Radford, whose 41-year-old husband died in the ward, and is a leading voice in the online campaign to stop the plans, said she was disappointed by what she’d heard.

“I wasn’t at all convinced. They didn’t come here to listen to us. They will continue to do what they want, and they will continue to lose funding because of this. We will definitely be continuing our campaign.”

HB Times 2nd June 2014