THE Shaw Trust held its annual horticultural open day on Saturday at the Elizabeth Road allotments.

As well as stocking up on tomato and lettuce plants for the garden, I was able to see the excellent work that has been done on the garden project.

We have come to rely on the support that the Shaw Trust provides for people with severe learning disabilities in the Basingstoke area.

It is therefore understandable that families are very concerned about the threat to cut the Shaw Trust's activities in Brook House.

Regular readers of this column will know that this comes at a time when courses for severely learning disabled people are also being closed in Alton, Newbury and Reading colleges.

LAST week, I met nurses from Basingstoke hospital who were lobbying Parliament about the current NHS financial crisis.

In Basingstoke hospital, we have seen the loss of 80-90 staff posts which the nurses feel has put extra pressure on front-line services.

Careful financial management at the hospital has meant that we are not facing the scale of problems experienced elsewhere.

However, our hospital does have to make cuts to repay a debt of £3million and this is clearly causing a great deal of concern among medical staff.