Sir David Nicholson, Chief Executive NHS England, confirms 2015 closure date for KGH A&E

I copy below recent letter from Sir David

 Roger Hampson Chief Executive London Borough of Redbridge Town Hall PO Box 2 High Road Ilford Essex IG1 1DD

 NHS England 4W12 Quarry House Quarry Hill Leeds LS2 7UE

 28 October 2013

 Dear Roger

 Re: Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust service changes affecting Redbridge residents

 Thank you or your letter of the 29 July 2013, where you raise the concerns on behalf of the Council of the London Borough of Redbridge of the Accident & Emergency (A&E) services at Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust (BHRUT). The concerns around the delivery of A&E services at BHRUT are well understood and I apologise for the long delay in responding to you. The NHS Trust Development Authority (NHS TDA) and NHS England have been working with BHRUT and local Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) on their urgent care improvement plan. NHS England is leading a tripartite approach together with Monitor and the NHS TDA to improve the quality of A&E services. Key to this is a system wide approach led by the local urgent care board that includes local providers and commissioners. NHS England has convened a series of tripartite panels to review A&E Recovery & Improvement Plans. Significant concerns were identified through the panel review process. The panel raised specific concerns in relation to a high vacancyrate across the Emergency Departments in BHRUT and the need to implementseven day working to improve patient experience and address delayed transfers of care. NHS England is working with local CCG commissioners to address these issues.

 There are on-going meetings with BHRUT and commissioners scheduled with the tripartite panel to further review progress. The health economy has been awarded £7m for winter 2013/14 to facilitate delivery of additional schemes to support A&E and community health services. Following concerns expressed by the Chief Executive of BHRUT regarding the Trust’s ability to maintain the safe delivery of accident and emergency services at Queens Hospital site, Barking & Dagenham, Havering and Redbridge CCGs commissioned an external clinical review. The review was carried out by the London Clinical Senate and concluded in September. The overarching findings from the review were that, whilst staffing issues were acknowledged, there was no evidence of any immediate risk to patients from the high number of medical staffing vacancies in the A&E services. Performance of A&E departments across London are considered in the context of neighbouring health economies.

The potential risks, quality implications and safety issues are also reviewed for neighbouring Trusts where one Trust is under pressure. We are not aware of any plans for North East London NHS Foundation Trust (NELFT) bed closures and no decisions on potential bed closures are expected to be taken until the outcome of the clinical review and the capacity planning exercise for the winter. Changes to King George Hospital A&E are not expected to take place until 2015 under Health for North East London programme. They will be supported by increases to the capacity of Queens Hospital and we are currently awaiting business cases in support of that. Assuming all goes to plan, we would expect local CCGs to lead a safety and capacity review prior to the final operational change taking place, to ensure patient safety is in no way compromised and that there is sufficient capacity in the system.

Yours sincerely

Sir David Nicholson
Chief Executive