AS promised, I met with consultants and management at the Alexandra Hospital on Friday, July 15 to highlight the feelings of patients and residents to planned changes at the hospital, and also to learn of new services to be centred in Redditch and improvements that are planned for our hospital," Writes Redditch MP Karen Lumley

People are quite rightly anxious about changes to maternity and paediatric overnight care at the Alex, and one promise I managed to get agreement to on Friday was that there would be a cross-party public meeting in the autumn, attended by council leaders, hospital bosses and consultants, where people will get the chance to have their say and to ask questions about proposed changes to healthcare services.

The sustainable future for hospitals across the country will see the centring of services in various key locations, and while some services are going to be centred in Worcester, other new services are going to be brought to Redditch, including breast reconstruction and chemotherapy.

The date for the public meeting, which will probably be jointly chaired by Redditch Borough Council leader Bill Hartnett and myself, has yet to be set, but is likely to be in September or October. Watch my website and local press for details over the next few weeks.

Last Tuesday, July 12 I played host to students from Year 4 at Oakhill First School at the new Houses of Parliament education centre. As usual it was lovely to see pupils and staff from a local school in London and for them to be able to see where all the action takes place!

The House rises for the summer recess tomorrow (Thursday), and of course schools break up for their much deserved rest and many businesses will be shutting down for a short while also. May I wish all those with holidays to look forward to over the next few weeks a wonderful and restful summer break.

During the summer recess I usually have what I call a Business Week, where I visit as many local businesses as I can, and this year is no exception as this takes place starting 8 August. I am looking forward to this immensely, to meeting staff and management at the variety of businesses based in the constituency and to hearing your views on a myriad of subjects.

As ever, to keep up to date with what I am doing, visit tellkaren.com or follow facebook.com/Karen4RedditchCounty or mobile.twitter.com/tell_karen.