WYE Valley NHS Trust Board’s support for the £40 million plan to rebuild and expand Hereford County Hospital is very welcome (Hospital revamp plan moving on, February 5).

The replacement of old hutted wards is long overdue. However, new and better health care facilities are only part of the answer.

Herefordshire residents will only have access to excellent health services when the NHS can recruit and retain more doctors, nurses and paramedics to work in the county. The Care Quality Commission highlighted shortages of medical, nursing and midwifery staff at Hereford Hospital when the trust was put into special measures.

Recruiting sufficient health care staff not only impacts on hospital care, but services in the community too.

On Friday I was in Kington when I met Lisa, a mother-of-three, who told me how she had to take her children to a dentist in Hereford as there was no NHS dentist in Kington.

Not only is this inconvenient, but expensive, and with cuts to local bus services, much harder for families who do not own a car.

Government ministers need to focus their attention on practical issues that matter to patients, not on increasing private sector involvement in the NHS.

The King’s Fund, an independent health research organisation, has criticised the Tory/Lib Dem Coalition reorganisation of the NHS as ‘disastrous’ and that it ‘distracted’ staff from focusing on patient care.

In 2018 the NHS will celebrate its 70th birthday. By then every resident in Herefordshire should be able to access an NHS dentist near where they live.

SALLY PRENTICE Labour Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for North Herefordshire Kimbolton