Petitions signed by constituents in support of Rachel Maclean MP’s petition for a GP-led Urgent Care Centre at the Alexandra Hospital have started rolling into her constituency office in Redditch this week.
The Member of Parliament for Redditch County launched her Parliamentary Petition at the end of February, urging the promised GP-led Urgent Care Centre to be delivered at the Alex as soon as possible.
Rachel said: “I am delighted at the response so far. Constituents have really taken this on board and the paper petitions have started coming into the office already. There’s still plenty of time though as we’ve now set the deadline at 13 April to give residents the Easter holiday to organise their return to me.”
Some constituents have asked why the petition cannot be signed on-line. This is because it has been set up as a Parliamentary Petition that will be presented to Parliament personally by Rachel. One of the stipulations is that all signatures must be on plain paper and must be original signatures and not photocopies or electronic. And as it is a petition raised by the residents of Redditch County to be presented by their Member of Parliament, all signatories must be from Rachel’s constituency to be valid.
Further good news is that Rachel has now set up a Freepost address so constituents can submit their petition forms free of postage. Simply place them in an envelope, write on the front the words ‘Freepost RACHEL MACLEAN MP’ and then put into any post box and they will returned to her constituency office. No stamp is required and no other wording is needed on the envelope.
FREEPOST RACHEL MACLEAN MP
Rachel added: “I wanted to ensure it was as easy as possible for residents to be able to return the petition forms to me, so hopefully this will be a great help to constituents.”
When overnight paediatric care was centralised at the Worcestershire Royal Hospital, the local Clinical Commissioning Group promised to bring forward plans for a GP-led Urgent Care Centre in Redditch. To date no action has been taken on this and thus why Rachel launched her petition to bring forward, without further delay, plans for the promised implementation of the Urgent Care Centre in Redditch.