31/03/2017 Look East

The future shape of the NHS in our region was announced today.

There'll be a radical upgrade to cancer care,

with new state-of-the-art radiotherapy machines

There'll also be a focus on mental health services,

with more beds available for children and young people,

and mental health staff will offer round-the-clock emergency care

NHS England East say services will be more joined-up,

but waiting times for routine surgery are likely to get longer due

NHS England claims the planned upgrade in cancer services

will save many lives, though this region will not

be getting one of four new one-stop testing centres -

Leading hospitals will be receiving new or upgraded machines.

The Royal College of Radiologists says the aim of speedy diagnosis

and treatment is admirable but unlikely to be realised

because of a serious shortage of radiologists.

Four months ago Look East filmed at a specialist mental health unit

at Broomfield Hospital in Chelmsford.

The birth of her baby Paris led to Velvet Pearson becoming seriously

unwell with a conditions that affects one in 1,000 new mums.

The location of a new mother and baby unit in the region should

Beds at this ?1 million children's mental health unit in Lowestoft

have been standing empty because of a shortage of funding.

Today, a commitment to increase the number of mental health beds

Within two years many of the region's A departments

will include mental health staff offering round-the-clock support

and there's a commitment to new urgent treatment centres,

and evening and weekend access to GP services.

You could actually throw a lot of money at the issues we're facing

currently but it won't resolve the fact that we're trying

to and finding it very difficult to recruit more GPs,

Norman Lamb, a former health minister, welcomes

the prioritising of cancer care and mental health services.

There is, though, a big downside to this, and that is that they are

acknowledging that people will wait longer for operations,

The Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt was on a visit to a Norwich care home.

We were told he wasn't available to be interviewed.

He was ushered out of the back door and sped away

Simon Evans is the regional director of NHS England.

I asked him whether the measures proposed would really help ease

I think they'll make a big difference.

Two and a half years ago, we announced the five-year forward

view and today's announcement is a stock-take on what we've

achieved over the last two and a half years and what we're

going to focus on over the next two years.

And we're focusing on areas that our patients are telling us

they want us to focus on and that's in terms of improving cancer

services, improving A performance, increasing the access to GPs

and improving access to mental health services.

Just touching upon the point about access to GPs,

extended access, in some parts of this region, we're

struggling to fill vacancies that we've already got,

In the east of England, we've invested over ?2 million

in practices to support recruitment and to support practices that might

be vulnerable and improve resilience for those practices.

One of the costs of these new plans announced today is that

some routine operations, people may have to wait a little

Do you think patients will understand that?

We are focusing on the areas we're being told that patients want us

to focus on and we will continue to try to deliver the 18-week

targets for treatment, and clinicians and managers,

GPs will work together to ensure that we can deliver

The children's services department at Norfolk County Council has

received an encouraging review from Ofsted.

The department was rated as inadequate 18 months ago.

The latest report by the education watchdog praises management changes

But it says the department is still not providing a good

One of the country's most technically advanced cinemas

Films at the new 14-screen Empire complex will be

As Kevin Burch reports, it's the first of its kind in the region.

Excited staff and exposure galore as the Empire opens its doors.

Giving Ipswich a total now of 27 screens.

Look back to 1961 and the cinema really was the only place to be.

And in Ipswich, too, look back through some old snapshots

and the pictures have always been paramount - no pun intended.

Remember the good old days when film used to be

about the crackle of celluloid, the projectionist doing the business

David was once a projectionist, now he's in charge of this control

room and computers which pretty much run all 14 laser screens unaided.

I mean, I do miss film - I expect every projectionist that's

out there that used to be a projectionist misses film -

but you have to move with the times and things move on.

Sometimes you see technology presented and you go, OK,

I can't really see the customer benefit, but this one

The picture quality, the colours, the sharpness,

the brightness off the screen is really like nothing

The Empire's taken two years to create, converting

what was a huge retail chunk of the butter market,

There is a drive under way to rejuvenate this corner of town.

The Empire team say they're delighted and excited

Let's leave you with the weather now, here's Julie.

It's a largely dry night with possibly the odd shower,

with some long clear spells, and it's going to be mild, too -

temperatures no lower than seven or eight.

That good old double act of sunshine and showers courtesy of this

We could see showers just about everywhere

If you do see one it could be heavy with possibly some hail

and thunder mixed in, and they'll be pretty

slow-moving as well, with these light south

Sunday should be largely fine and dry with just the very small

In a moment, the national forecast, but I'll leave you with the outlook.

After the mist and fog clears on Monday, a fine and dry day.

Perhaps some showery rain for a time on Tuesday,

but then it should become dry again everywhere.

Hello. There the weekend is here and Sunday looks like being the better

day of the two. We're going to start the weekend, a new month, with

sunshine and April showers. Those fade away overnight. Saturday night

could be chilly. It points to a fine day on Sunday. This picture was

taken by a weather watcher to end the day in Dundee. This one is

probably my favourite of the day. This was taken at Yarmouth in the

Isle of Wight. Here we could catch showers overnight. Probably going to

be dry in Dundee. You can see where the wet weather is, in the

south-west and into Wales. That could be heavier eier at times.

Clearer skies for Eastern parts of England. Not as warm as last night.

Not cold