VENTNOR'S health visitor team, based for the last four years at Salisbury Gardens, is about to be moved to Sandown.

Ventnor Town Council is so concerned about the decision that it unanimously decided at its meeting on Monday, June 10, to ask those responsible to revisit it.

A spokesperson for the town council said: "We understand that one of the drivers of the proposed move is to save the current £4,500 rent.

"This is clearly not a deliverable saving given the additional six miles each way travel to their place of work that would be required at 45 pence per mile plus the lost face-to-face client time.

"The town council’s major concern is the inevitable reduction in the level of this crucial service for the town’s young mothers and their children.

"It’s all the more serious because Barnardo’s have reduced services at the once excellent Children’s Centre in the town to less than one day a week.

"Upper Ventnor and the town centre, home for half the town’s population, are among the most deprived, not only on the Island, but nationally too, according to the government’s Index of Multiple Deprivation 2015.

"The evidence showing the importance of the early years’ experience in addressing deprivation and increasing life chances is absolutely clear, which is why the town council is requesting that this decision be reconsidered in consultation with us."

A spokesperson for the Isle of Wight NHS Trust said: “Moving health visitors a short distance into a building where they will be based with the rest of their team will be better for that team and for their patients.

"People in Ventnor will not see any change in the service that they receive.”