I note that leaders of Brighton and Hove City Council called for a scrutiny committee to investigate care standards at the Peel and Stewart wards at the Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton.

There is already a scrutiny committee within the council which should be monitoring standards of our health services.

It took over the role of the Community Health Council (CHC) after it was abolished by the Government in December 2002.

The CHC was the patients' voice in the NHS and presented the report "Dignity On The Wards" to the Brighton Health Trust together with its recommendations.

Obviously its response to the CHC just paid lip service to what was considered to be a huge problem.

The CHC was told a large sum of money had been awarded by the Government for a purpose-built facility to be sited at the Brighton General Hospital and that the old "Nightingale" wards would be completely refurbished.

The CHC also carried out a study, "Foodwatch", and it said quite clearly that the many patients who were not able to feed themselves were not eating anything and there was a disgraceful waste of food.

One result was that meal times were made "closed" times with no treatment, ward rounds or visitors allowed to enable nurses to help those patients eat their food.

Both these reports were extensively covered in The Argus at the time they were released.

The CHC was astonished when its abolishment was announced by the Government. It voiced its concerns that council scrutiny committees would not have the resources or expertise of the CHCs in England and Wales to make detailed studies and reports.

The recent BBC Panorama programme, which featured the Royal Sussex County Hospital, shows these concerns were justified.

There have obviously been no follow-up visits to the areas covered by the CHC. The chief executive, Peter Coles, should hang his head in shame and demand immediate changes, not wait for the outcome of an internal inquiry.

Next time he is looking for savings, he should look closely at the bureaucracy. There are far too many directors with their well-furnished offices and computers, secretaries and so on.

You cannot run a hospital from behind an office desk. Get rid of some of these people and employ more staff who actually deal with patients.

Finally, all staff should be told to treat each patient as they would like someone to treat a member of their own family.

-Christine M Holmes, Brighton