We Can’t Treat Health as a Luxury. It Has to Start Where People Are.

For too long, communities across our county were left waiting.

Waiting for GP appointments that never came.

For mental health support that disappeared into referral lists.

For urgent care that showed up too late.

This didn’t happen overnight. It followed over a decade of underfunding, fragmentation, and a politics that treated healthcare like a spreadsheet, not a service.

That is why, in early 2024, under the previous Conservative government, I brought forward a motion to declare a health emergency in North Herts.

Not for headlines. For honesty.

Because the problems we face were visible long before they made the news. The inequality. The delays. The fatigue among staff and the fear among patients. They weren’t just national trends. They were happening here.

Now we have a Labour government. And their 10-year plan for health reflects a shift — a commitment to end the two-tier system, rebuild care where need is greatest, move upstream with prevention, and invest in the people who hold the system together.

It matters. But it cannot work from the top alone.

Because while national plans can lay the foundation, recovery is built locally. And there is no version of a healthier county without local government playing its full part.

Health is not sealed in a clinic. It lives in housing. In transport. In safety and green space. In social care that gives people dignity, and education that opens up life. These things do not sit in silos. They are the conditions that shape how well — or how unequally — we live.

They are also where we see the sharpest fault lines.

Women dismissed for years. LGBTQIA+ residents unable to find affirming care. Black and Asian communities facing worse outcomes from services that were never designed for them.

That is not just disparity. It is a health crisis.

And it is personal.

My mum is undergoing cancer treatment. Her diagnosis came late. Any later, and we might have lost her. We are lucky. So many are not.

That is why we need more than short-term fixes. We need a different way of working — one that begins with care and builds out from there. One that recognises trust is not just earned by institutions, but shared with people. One that gives councils the tools to act and the courage to lead.

Because building a fairer, healthier county means showing up when it counts. It means grounding health in the places people actually live their lives — homes, schools, buses, parks, care centres. It means leadership that brings that all together quietly and purposefully, from the ground up.

That is the change I am working for.

Not distant.

Not deferred.

Community up. Council backed. County wide. All the way through.