IT'S eight years since the government launched the National Service Framework (NSF) for mental health.

It was one of a number of 10-year initiatives aimed at improving health and social carer services throughout the country.

Mental health, with cancer and heart disease, had been identified as some of the most deficient and needy areas and the launch of the NSF was accompanied by a great deal of publicity, the establishment of local implementation teams (LITs) and, quite a bit of new money to develop and create quite clearly identified new services and areas that needed considerable improvement.

Over the years, all local "stakeholders" (yes, it is one of those horrible New Labour words), were involved in extensive and interminable meetings, numerous public consultation events and a plethora of service development strategies.

I know, I was involved in it for nearly five years, firstly as a council employee and then, when my initial two-year contract was extended, with the PCT.

A great deal of time and money as well as high-level NHS and council management staff together with voluntary sector, service user, carer and public input has been given to this programme in the last eight years.

The government even provided very clear guidelines and benchmarks to identify an exact breakdown of services being provided, the areas of greatest deficiency, the precise amounts being spent, the sectors where identifiable progress has been made and those areas needing more attention.

All scrutinised, annually, at local, regional and national level.

Imagine my surprise then when I opened the recruitment pages of the national press to see a Blackburn with Darwen NHS advert seeking an "Invitation to Tender - Comprehensive Mental Health Needs Assessment" requesting organisations to bid for a programme of work to help formulate a commissioning strategy for the further development of mental health services in Blackburn with Darwen.

What on earth have these highly paid people been doing for the last eight years?

One of the reasons I left the first public sector job that I had ever done was the increasing frustration with the massive, daily and ever-increasing waste in just about every area of the council's and, even more so, the NHS's activities.

Local stakeholders? The only stake that needs holding is the one that needs to be driven into the heart of the rotten system that is blithely wasting your money in the knowledge that there is always more to come in increased unearned, unmerited and unaccountable local and national taxes.

KRYS WICZKOWSKA, Prestwich.