19/12/2016 Look East (West)

In Look East tonight: A crisis in urgent care centres as increasing

numbers of patients are turning up who could be seen at a pharmacy.

You see a few, and few boot in, so we never get the chance to catch up.

Keeping them flying for 50 years, the local engineering firm doing

And I'll have your weather for the week ahead including the Christmas

forecast. Urgent care centres in our region -

set up to alleviate pressure on hospital A departments -

are now at capacity themselves. One clinic is seeing almost double

the number of patients And this at the start

of the NHS's busiest period. Our reporter Mousumi Bakshi spent

the day at Corby urgent care centre. Fuller waiting rooms

and longer waiting times - if there is a sign of it crisis

in care, this is surely it. A service established to alleviate

pressure on A succumbing Patient demand is at an all-time

high here and shows no The number of patients we should be

seeing is about 147 patients a day. And that increase has been a steady

rise over a long period of time It is not unusual for us to see

240 patients in a day. Opened in 2012, the centre

was championed as an alternative to A, where urgent but not

cricitcal conditions like fractures David has come in after

suffering a stroke. I felt it was important I come

and get this checked out. Hopefully I will not take too much

of their time up and they won't take I have had a cough for a week

and I have already seen someone. I thought I had better have

another checkup before Christmas as everywhere

will probably be close. The centre opened at 8:00 this

morning and by 2:30, During that time, a number

of patients had to be diverted to Kettering General,

such was the backlog. Sometimes it is impossible to go

for lunch at one or two. The reason you end up going so late

is because you are trying You try to get them through,

but sometimes, by the time you see a few, another few book in,

so you never get Health bosses admit that pressure

is unlikely to ease in the run-up We have been in touch with hospitals

across the region to see Northampton General told us

they were experiencing sustained, intense pressure with a lack

of available beds tied with the rising number

of people going to A As a result, some nonurgent

operations have had to be cancelled, They've told us at any given time

that about 100 people deemed medically fit

to leave hospital can't. The so-called "bed blockers",

because they are awaiting On top of that, Northampton General

have told us that is on average about 70 people who come to A

to seek treatment could have got it The picture is similar

at Addenbrooke's in Cambridge, they say on average 15% of patients

could have been seen elsewhere. A 78-year-old coach driver

who crashed into a stationary car on the M1 in Bedfordshire killing

three people has been Alan Peters was driving his double

decker coach on the hard shoulder of the motorway despite overhead

signs telling motorists not to use Two of the three men who died

were from Newport Pagnell. The judge said Peters was in "state

of semi-consciousness" at the time. An inquest has heard how a junior

doctor from Melbourne took her own life after having

doubts about her job. Rose Polge, who was 25,

is believed to have walked into the sea after leaving a shift

early at Torbay Hospital in Devon. She had earlier told her

boyfriend she was struggling Following the inquest

into her death today, her family pointed to increasingly

heavy workloads on young medics and called for something to be done

to ease the crisis in morale Workers at the Northamptonshire

based cereal company Weetabix The union, Usdaw, said staff

at the sites in Burton Latimer and Corby voted for action

after a row over shift patterns. Each strike will run for 24 hours,

with no more than one Another prisoner has died

at Woodhill prison in Milton Keynes. It brings the number of prisoners

who've taken their lives Our reporter Waseem Mirza has been

looking at this and is here now. Well, Clare, this latest incident

happened last Sunday. There will be in inquest

opening in the morning But nevertheless, as you say,

this latest death, if confirmed as a suicide, would bring the total

to seven prisoners who've ended That means it's a high-security

jail, which can Two years ago, an inspector's report

described the number of incidents as "very high" and said the prison

response to the deaths The Ministry of Justice has tonight

told us it recognises It's "invested in specialist mental

health training for prison officers, allocated more funding for prison

safety" and says it's also launched a suicide

and self-harm reduction project. But the Howard League

for Penal Reform has told me just a short time ago that the prison

population at Woodhill is They say they want the Government

to "grasp the nettle" and rethink the numbers of prisoners

going to jail. The Prison Officers Association

meanwhile say there's a direct link between high suicide rates

and low staffing. And we'll have more coverage

on the story tomorrow when the inquest into the latest

death at Woodhill begins tomorrow. 50 years ago today an RAF Hercules

transport plane flew into Cambridge Airport,

to be serviced by the engineering It was the beginning of a long

business relationship with the RAF that's now worth more than a quarter

of a billion pounds. But as Alex Dunlop reports,

the anniversary fly past was somewhat thwarted

by the December weather. Like a bridesmaid running up

the aisle before a wedding, an American Osprey flies past

the expectant crowd The VIPs collect on a balcony

to watch four C130 Hercules Sadly, the clouds descended even

lower, but at least we heard But in the best tradition,

here is one that Marshall prepared Similar foggy weather,

but this was the first Hercules The Cambridge-based company has had

the contract ever since. The latest one, to 2022,

is worth ?69 million. Half a dozen are serviced by

the 1,200 workers unit any one time. They're fairly complex

as far as avionics go, but the fundamentals of it are quite

basic, which explains In the last 15 years or so I've done

more flights on Fat Albert, as she's effectively known,

than I can recall. She might not be the most

comfortable plane, but she is certainly one

of the most reliable. While a major service

on your car would take a day, an overhaul of this airframe takes

up to nine months. Hercules from across the world

are serviced at Marshall, but the RAF is by far

its biggest customer. The last contract we actually

signed with the MOD, we took 20% out in terms of real

value and increased availability by 30% so year on year year,

that's pretty significant. It also helps to win

other MOD contracts. Marshall work on the Navy's Estute

Submarine class and supply the kit for army mobile hospital units

but this is the flagship deal, celebrated with a special paint job

on the tail of an iconic aircraft. Fat Albert has a few

decades of life in her yet. The location for Northamptonshire's

new police and fire This is what the new building

on Cherry Hall Road The phased move will take

place in late 2017. Let's get the weather

for the week ahead with Julie, A lot of uncertainty

regarding the run-up to Christmas and what the weather is going to do,

but this is how it A largely dry night apart from a few

showers, clear intervals and we may see patchiness and frost in places

because in some spots, temperatures make fall

lower than these values, Tomorrow, we start off with dues

and showers and quite a lot of cloud and mist in places but then it

should be drier and brighter and we should see sunshine breaking

through, temperatures around six Wednesday's weather depends

on the movement of this front. At the moment, it looks

like a cloudy start with patchy rain that will become drier and brighter

with blustery showers moving through, we're expecting

a good moderate to fresh Thursday's weather is

dependent on how quickly For most of us, it should start dry,

the rain should clear into the North Sea and we should

see sunshine developing. Friday, high pressures in charge,

this weather front bringing rain on Friday night so perhaps some

frost and mist first thing on Friday but short-lived and the bulk

of the day should be fine and dry, turning increasingly

cloudy from the west. In a moment, the national forecast,

but I'll leave you with the outlook for Christmas and it does look like,

on Christmas Eve, some rain first thing then that gives

way to blustery showers and Christmas Day, a dry start

with wet and windy weather moving Heavy weather is brewing, it will

not reach us just yet. It will take a good few days before the stormy

weather reaches us. At the moment, it's just potential, nothing is

certain, but it will be different to what we've had over the last few

weeks,