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How am I supposed to book an appointment with an ENT???
The spray helps for a couple of weeks, but the problem keeps coming back. Every time I contact the GP (which takes me the whole morning waiting on the phone) I'm told to come in person and am again advised to use the spray, which is only a temporary fix as the issue reoccurs.
I'm not sure how to go about booking an appointment with an ENT specialist directly. I feel like I'm wasting time with paramedics and treatments that don't work long-term. Should I consider going private? If so, does anyone have recommendations for private ENT specialists in London? Or how do I actually visit a public ENT through the NHS?
Edit: I am not calling 999/ambulance. I am calling my GP and when I go I get visited by paramedics, not actual doctors.
if u go private u still need a gp referral for anything beyond the initial consult, so ask about the nhs e-referral system instead. under the nhs constitution u have the right to choose your provider, meaning u can ask ur gp to refer u to a specific hospital with a shorter wait, not just whatever they pick. guys & st thomas both do ENT, waiting times vary a lot so check myplannedcare.nhs.uk before u commit. also worth asking the gp to actually document the recurrent issue in ur notes each visit, cos a paper trail of failed treatments is what gets u past the "just use the spray" loop
ask for a referral to the Royal National ENT on Huntley Street specifically, but also get your GP to note whether it's unilateral. one-sided ear stuff that keeps coming back over months is the thing that should bump you up the priority list, and GPs sometimes miss that. waiting lists there are long though, so check myplannedcare before you commit. in the meantime a private audiologist can do a tympanogram for like 40 quid and tell you if it's fluid behind the drum, which is useful ammo when you go back.
The paramedic thing is odd, that's usually what happens when a home visit gets triaged rather than a GP appointment. When you ring, ask specifically for a face to face with a GP, not a telephone triage, because triage is what routes you to the paramedic team. For the ear itself, ask the GP to check whether it could be eustachian tube dysfunction or glue ear rather than an infection, since recurrent problems that a spray only temporarily fixes often aren't bacterial and won't clear with more spray. A referral to ENT at somewhere like the Royal National ENT Hospital on Huntley Street is the standard route, and you can request that specific hospital under choose and refer.
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What are some innovative ways to anonymously compare rental prices in a city?
SpareRoom's "rooms wanted" ads are underrated for this. people post what they're currently paying alongside what they want next, so you can scrape a rough sense of going rates by postcode without anyone knowing you looked. it skews young and flatshare heavy tho, so not much use if you're after 2-beds in zone 2.
Another one is just the depozit or tenancy deposit scheme data. not public-facing, but your council's housing officer can tell you median rents from deposit registrations if you email them under FOI. takes weeks, but its proper anon and nobody clocks u.
Rightmove and Zoopla only show asking rents, which are often 10 to 15 percent above what a place actually goes for, so they're a poor benchmark. The trick I've used is the ONS Price Index of Private Rents, which breaks things down to borough level and is genuinely anonymous since it's aggregate data, no listing or account needed. For something more granular, the London Renters Union runs a rent reporting tool where you submit what you're paying with your postcode and it maps it against others nearby, though the coverage is patchy outside the inner boroughs.
the openrent "rent check" thing is decent for zones 3-4 where the unions tool barely reaches. also worth checking the london.gov.uk planning portal for new build applications, they list "affordable" and market rent figures per unit in the viability assessments, which is basically the developer telling the council what they expect to charge. bit of a faff to dig through but its public, anonymous & nobody knows ur looking