Cardigan is to get a new modernised hospital after councillors approved planning permission for a £50m development of the Bath House site. Liberty Mercian, a South Wales property develop- ment company, plans to build a retail, social care housing and hospital on the land just to the north of the town centre.

The scale of the debt facing the NHS in Wales was revealed yesterday, topping £100m and threatening the future of hospitals around the country. Health Minister Dr Brian Gibbons last night admitted that the health service’s accumulated debts were far worse than previously estimated. He put the figure at “around £100m” and also warned that last year’s financial pressures were still present.

Police have backed a decision not to prosecute the family of a terminally ill man who died in an assisted death at a clinic in Switzerland. Paul Bennett, 47, from Swansea, south Wales, chose to die from lethal injection at the Dignitas clinic in Zurich in May this year.

A Gwent council department which came under fire for failing vulnerable youngsters is no longer the subject of serious concern, it was announced today. The children’s services unit in Blaenau

The row over a Home Office programme to house sex offenders at an open prison in Monmouthshire has been reopened by a leading Labour politician in Wales. Wales’ Social Justice Minister Edwina Hart has again intervened and spoken of her disappointment at the lack of review of the policy. It follows a series of inmates, including child rapists and murderers, absconding from Prescoed jail near Usk.

The largest social services department in Wales is no longer under Welsh Assembly Government scrutiny after improvements were made. Cardiff’s social services had been heavily criticised in the way it dealt with protecting vulnerable children. In 2002, it had one of the worst inspection reports in Wales and England and has since been monitored every three months by an assembly body.

Violent and drunken patients who attack healthcare workers trying to help them are to receive swift justice in a special new court in Swansea. Official figures out today show there were 73 physical and serious verbal attacks on local staff in the last year. Workers at Morriston, Singleton and Cefn Coed hospitals alone have been subjected to 46 incidents since January. They are left battered and bruised just trying to do their job.

Wales’ first specialist domestic violence court programme was launched in Gwent yesterday, in a bid to reduce the number of attacks in the home. The aims of Gwent Specialist Domestic Violence Court Programme are to help improve victim safety and bring more perpetrators to justice. Key players, including the police, probation and the Criminal Prosecution Service, hope it will mean cases can be fast-tracked.

{mosimage} Care Home owners in West Wales have warned that unless funding for the independent sector is increased, widespread closures may occur. According to Care Forum Wales (CFW), the members association for the independent care sector in Wales, increases in fees awarded to independently run homes in Carmarthenshire fall far short of the awards made to council-run care homes. And with rising energy costs, and high standards to maintain, care home owners have said unless increases are made staying open may no longer be viable. At a Carmarthenshire council meeting in July, it was decided that fees awarded to independent care homes would rise by 4% – 2% to be backdated to April, with a further 2% increase being applied to all contracts for service users aged 65 and over from October.

Health Minister Dr Brian Gibbons has said he was concerned about the slow pace of improvement in adult social services in Carmarthenshire and the impact upon vulnerable people who are waiting for services they urgently need. This follows a major report into the way Carmarthenshire County Council provides social services, carried out jointly by the Social Services Inspectorate for Wales and the Wales Audit Office, which found found services to be inconsistent. The Council was judged as being uncertainly placed to sustain and improve services.