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The town hall's health scrutiny committee has now referred the final decision to Health Secretary Alan Johnson, who must now make the final ruling on whether the hospital is to be saved or if it is to close. A final decision on the hospital's future is expected to be reached by him later in the year. People who wish to make their views known to the secretary of state can write to him at The Department of Health, Richmond House, 79 Whitehall, London SW1A 2NS. Emails can be sent to dhmail@dh.gsi.gov.uk or alternatively to ajohnson@parliament.uk You can also have your say on this site.
The decision to refer the matter to the secretary of state comes at the end of a long running council campaign to save NHS services at the Bolingbroke. This has been backed up by strong protests against the hospital's closure from all sections of the local community. At the beginning of July, the St George's Healthcare NHS Trust, which owns the Bolingbroke site, and the Wandsworth Primary Care Trust, which funds the services located there, jointly agreed that the 104-year-old hospital should close. Most of the hospital's remaining clinical services would be transferred instead to the St John's Therapy Centre. Both trusts argue that the Bolingbroke is underused and uneconomic and that they cannot afford to refurbish and modernise it. The council has not been convinced by their arguments and that viable solutions do exist to open a modern new community hospital, serving residents of Wandsworth and north Battersea, on the site One way of financing the hospital's modernisation could be for the trusts to sell or lease some of the site. This option does not appear to have been investigated or evaluated by NHS managers. As recently as April 2004 the Bolingbroke was identified in an NHS Strategic Service Review as being the best site for a refurbished community hospital for the area, which would offer a wide range of local health services. The hospital has seen a number of services withdrawn in recent years, in what many view as a case of "closure by stealth". However, some important services remain there including a day hospital for older people; an outpatient department; imaging and breast screening and the local GP out-of-hours service. Recent history On 17th January 2005 the St George's Trust announced that it would be closing all 54 in-patient beds at the Bolingbroke, in the wake of a review of fire safety. While the council recognises the importance of fire safety, the problems were not insurmountable and therefore the decision to axe the beds was premature and unwise. When the council's Health Committee asked for more information on this, it emerged that these fire safety issues had first been identified in the late 1980s, but never rectified. The council was also deeply concerned that the loss of inpatient beds came less than a year after more than £2m was spent on refurbishing the inpatient wards. The council's role in scrutinising the NHS Wandsworth was one of the first councils to embrace the new power to scrutinise health services which was introduced by the Government in 2003. Local authorities must now be consulted on any substantial change in health services in their area. They can also require health service managers to attend meetings of the overview and scrutiny committee to answer questions about their service. The council has always argued for increased accountability for local health services and is determined to make the best possible use of this new power. The health overview and scrutiny committee receives regular reports on the performance of local health services and discusses these with the chief executives of the local health service bodies. It looks in more detail into issues of particular concern. More information on the Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee News from the Council
09/09/2008 Site sale key to Bolingbroke plans |
Bolingbroke's fate rests with the Minister