Junior Doctors' Strike: Picket line set up at Peterborough City Hospital

A picket line has been set up at Peterborough City Hospital at the start of a national strike by junior doctors.

The four day strike is set to cause disruption for patients across the country as junior doctors call for better pay.

The strike started on Tuesday, April 11, and is set to end on Saturday (April 15) morning.

Michelle Cady, Chief Operations Officer at North West Anglia NHS Foundation Trust, which runs Peterborough City and Hinchingbrooke Hospitals, said plans had been put in place to ensure disruption was kept ‘to a minimum. She said’: “We are expecting our hospitals to be operationally impacted by the proposed nationwide industrial action taking place this week. The 96-hour action period is in response to the dispute over junior doctors’ pay and is a matter between the British Medical Association (BMA) and the Government. Locally we meet regularly with the BMA via the Local Negotiating Committee and we are committed to working in partnership to prioritise safe patient care and to protect service delivery, where possible.

“Our Trust leadership team has confirmed plans to manage service delivery during the period of action and the week as a whole. Our main priority is to ensure we can continue to run our hospitals and care for our patients safely. We hope to keep any disruption to a minimum.

“Patients with an appointment planned during the period of action are being contacted directly if this means their appointment now needs to be rescheduled. We appreciate how disappointing this will be for anyone waiting for treatment or investigations and we are sorry to postpone arrangements. Patients who are not contacted in advance should attend their appointment as planned.

“Our emergency services will remain open, but we ask that you contact NHS 111 or NHS111 Online before coming to hospital, so that you can be directed to the most appropriate place for your care or treatment.

“We would like to thank our patients for bearing with us and our staff for all the extra efforts that they are giving so that the Trust can give safe patient care.”

When the strikes were announced, Dr Vivek Trivedi and Dr Robert Laurenson, co-chairs of the BMA junior doctor committee, said: "We want to spend our time looking after patients, not on strike. But with an NHS buckling under a workforce crisis, and four in ten junior doctors looking to leave, we can’t stand by while our pay is further eroded by inflation and an intransigent Government. We are not going to stop until we are paid what we are worth, and if ministers don’t accept that when we tell them in person, we will have to tell them from the picket line.”

The strikes are the latest to take place across the country. Last week passport workers, including those from Peterborough, started industrial action, again calling for better pay.