"I should be positive but..."

Thank you for posting about your recent contact with the team at the C&E Centre and we would like to apologise that it has not been a more positive experience.

In relation to car parking, we only have a small car park that has to cater for several services that are delivered by the Chelmsford and Essex Centre. The on-site car park is for the use of both staff and service users.

As we are a community team, staff need quick access to their cars on-site to respond to urgent calls out to our patients. We would like to reassure you that there is always parking available for visitors who have a blue badge and also we can allow access for a short time in order to allow visitors to be dropped off at the site and we have designated spaces for this purpose.

In relation to your point regarding Consultants/Doctors, the Trust makes every effort to recruit substantive Consultants and to retain them. Where possible and when changes are planned, patients do get notified of changes to their medical Consultant. We do however, have doctors training to be Specialists who rotate through different posts in order to get exposure to different conditions. This arrangement is replicated throughout the National Health Service.

Doctors have to satisfy the General Medical Council (GMC) that they have a reasonable command of English Language prior to obtaining a licence to practice in the UK and we only employ duly registered doctors with a robust vetting process.

With regard to SMS alerts for appointments, unfortunately at the present time, the information system in the North part of the trust does not support this function however we are looking into options to introduce this as we would be very keen to have this facility.