September 2021
Introducing Councillor Tim Shickle
Tim was co-opted as a member of Shipston Town Council at the September meeting.
I moved to the Shipston area some 18 years ago from the big smoke (London).
I currently live in Hanson Avenue with my fiancee Caroline, two sons and a very young daughter. Caroline works at Greenfields Nursery and our son has just started in Reception at Shipston Primary School so we are well and truly embedded in the town which we proudly call our home.
So why join Shipston Town Council? Well, I felt that I would like to use some of my work skills to help make our amazing town more resilient for our future generations plus I get frustrated seeing so many moans and groans that I thought why not try and help.
Some of you may already know me as the “Three bed house man” – so the story goes during lockdown we were urgently looking for a private rental and I literally bombarded local social media pages asking for a house. It worked and we finally found one. So lesson learnt constant pestering can help you get what you want.
I’m a lover of most forms of music, I DJ at local events, I like to refresh myself in our amazing drinking establishments, I like to keep things local to help support our economy, I’m passionate about the climate and how we leave it for our children and our children’s children, I want to see safer routes to schools, the right infrastructure for the town given all the growth that has occurred, great accessibility routes for users of pushchairs, mobility scooters & cyclists within Shipston whilst retaining a fair and equitable environment that takes into account the needs of everyone. Oh and I have two rescue donkeys called Fifi and Honkey and I’m mad about a specific brand of 4x4 that have a very large head office near the M40 (sorry Greta).
That’s me in a nutshell. I welcome conversations with members of the town to discuss how you feel we can make things better. You can contact me by emailing tim.shickle@shipstontowncouncil.org
If you have really strong feelings about our amazing town why not use that fire in your belly and come and join the Town Council to help make a difference to the place where we live and love. There are still vacancies if you would like to join.
Update on the community hospital inpatient review
South Warwickshire NHS Foundation Trust (SWFT) are currently undertaking a review of the inpatient beds at the community hospitals: Ellen Badger and the Nicol Unit at Stratford Hospital.
SWFT told us: “The focus of this review is to ensure we are providing the services that meet the health and care needs of the people of south Warwickshire, both now and in years to come. The first stage of the review has been exploring previous, current, and future use of the community hospital beds. We have been working with Healthwatch Warwickshire to gather the views of previous and potential patients regarding the inpatient services. We are very grateful to Healthwatch and everyone who took their time to share their views and experiences.”
We were asked to gather and analyse the views of past and potential patients about their experience, or hypothetical needs in relation to community bed provision in South Warwickshire.
We heard from over 500 people, and the feedback received was largely positive. It is clear that the community beds provision is a highly valued service. Some people told us that they felt it was an appropriate way to transition between an acute stay in hospital and returning home. Others told us how they valued being close to home, and family and friends so that they could visit; and the benefits of the smaller nature of community hospitals as opposed to larger hospitals which can be hard to navigate your way around.
Full reports of the surveys conducted by Healthwatch can be found here:
https://www.healthwatchwarwickshire.co.uk/report/2021-09-20/south-warwickshire-community-beds-review