After reading the report in the Watford Observer of how the Herts Valley Clinical Commissioning Group intends to chop £8.5million from social care, I find this quite despicable.

Once again care in the community becomes an easy target for cuts which is so shameful and unfair to folk who are elderly, patients with a continuing condition, and palliative care to end of life patients.

I take particular dislike to Dr Nicolas Small’s, chairman of Herts Valley CCG, comments of ‘NHS England has been very clear with us about the need to review all lines of expenditure and one of the areas of scrutiny must be expenditure that is discretionary and not core health spending.’

I find Dr Small’s comments so disregarding and giving no attention or respect to the dying, the elderly, and the sick who will be placed into social care.

READ MORE: A&E waiting times 'likely to increase' after £8.5m cuts to care budget

So therefore Dr Small’s discretionary judgement means he would sooner chop £8.5million of funding to social care rather than core health spending.

Why has Dr Small and his CCG made this decision that not only affects social care, which is already an almighty problem, but will then place more pressure on GP surgeries to take up the slack, and then increase waiting times in A&E departments?

Surely and simply then because of cuts to social care we then have a situation where patients who are in hospital and all ready to be discharged and placed into social care can’t because of underfunding.

These cuts to social care will also have an impact on staffing to care in the community which will mean job losses.

Andrew Lansley’s reforms of the NHS forced through at a cost of £1.4billion against widespread opposition from frontline staff four years ago has now come back to bite the Tories/Lib Dem coalition government of 2014.

So therefore this is why we will see in the future more cuts to social care, dozens of accident and emergency departments, maternity units and local hospitals closed or downgraded, hospital palliative care wards will close under NHS plans.

Thousands of beds will be cut and treatments such as heart surgery and cancer care will be centralised across most of the country which then means patients will be travelling endless miles to receive in some cases life-saving treatment such as end of life palliative care.

Ernie Mackenzie, Gammons Lane, Watford