A LEADING Thurrock councillor has called on Basildon Hospital to review its visiting hours restrictions.

In line with many other hospitals across the country, Basildon restricts visiting to one person who must make an appointment due to continue covid rules.

At Thurrock Council's recent health and wellbeing committee meeting chairman Cllr Shane Ralph, said: "As a councillor, I'm getting a lot of questions from residents on why they have a time slot to visit when we're told there's no restrictions nationally. I'm getting bombarded with some really heart-breaking stories.

"We're getting a lot of questions from people who are still unable to see their loved ones apart from having to schedule appointment times. It's very heart breaking for people especially when restrictions have been dropped."

Hannah Coffey from the Mid and South Essex Hospital Trust which runs Basildon, Southend and Broomfield Hospitals, said: "Nationally within the healthcare environment there are restrictions around visiting. We recently reduced the no visitor policy and people can book and have one visitor. We do use discretion. There are exceptional circumstances where we absolutely do use discretion in critical care and palliative care situations.

"We also hope the restrictions will be relaxed as soon as possible because we know how difficult it is both for patients and their families not being able to visit. We do have a facility where people can send notes and letters via the communications team to their relatives and that's been well received."

Ms Coffey added: "We are hoping within the next couple of weeks we will get some updated guidance on infection control in terms of some of the pathways we have and also have the ability to further relax visiting requirements because we absolutely know and understand how important that is to everybody."

The committee heard people are also unable to go into A&E with relatives but "phenomenal" members of Basildon Hospital's security team have been going out of their way to help anxious patients.

A covid update by Jo Broadbent, Thurrock's director of public health, revealed cases have dropped in Thurrock to 277 per 100,000, far lower than in January when it was 2275 per 100,000.

It's not the first time this year that Cllr ralkph has been on the case of Basildon Hospital. In January he was critical of and 'disturbed by' procedures in the hospital's maternity unit.