Community Health Councils and N.H.S. community physicians: potential for a fruitful relationship.

sensitive and responsive to those who use it. The need for an independent consumer body seems justified when considering the NHS’s position as: a nearmonopoly provider of health care for the bulk of the population; its dominance by professional and staff interests; the huge sum of public money required for its operation; and the fact that decisions about the size, allocation and use of health resources are not simply technical and best left to the ’experts’, but are also ideological and political, and therefore, the concern of the public, meriting the widest arena of discussion. CHCs were given a difficult job and imprecisely defined and largely advisory powers under the 1974 reorganisation’. Since then, they have aroused considerable controversy while attempting to build a coherent