A rebuttal to Cllr Athwal's claim that King George A&E is secure

I sent the below to Cllrs in Barking and Dagenham, Havering & Redbridge earlier this evening. Without the publication of the £49M bid document to "reconfigure" King George his claims at http://www.redbridgelabour.org.uk/newsblog/2019/03/29/ae-services-at-king-george-will-remain-open/ cannot be verified.

Dear Councillors

Jas Athwal and other Council leaders have issued a baffling statement to say King George A&E is secure.

There is a new plan to close King George A&E at page 15 of the strategic estates plan below (1)

Funding is being sought to implement this plan at 18 for £49M to “reconfigure” acute care at King George and Queens, this has always been NHS manager code for closing KGH A&E.

I invite Cllr Athwal to attend the meeting tomorrow with a copy of the plan to spend £49M on King George and Queens and talk it through with us and also publish the £49M bid document in its entirety.

The way for Cllr Athwal to end claims that a new plan to close King George A&E exists is to publish the £49M bid document in full. Something he is conspicuously unwilling to do.

Both Wes Streeting MP and Keith Prince AM have called for the £49M bid document to be published in full immediately.

The NHS is ours, to make this slogan a reality key documents such as the £49M bid document need to be published and go to council health scrutiny committees. This has not happened.

As well as the £49M bid two other bids were made for maternity and children services totalling £22M at Queens. Cllr Athwal needs to disclose how much of this £49M was/is meant to be spent at King George is it £5M, £10M? A definite sum needs to be provided. How do we know if he is doing his job properly if we do not even know how much money he is advocating to be invested in King George Hospital?

So the campaign continues to stop the new plan to close King George A&E.

At 11:20am this morning I sent the email below (2) to a TV newsdesk manager who expressed interest about the campaign to stop the new plan. The statement by Jas is clearly designed to stop TV coming to King George.

I will do my best early tomorrow morning to persuade TV news to attend. I will be outside King George at 10:30 if it makes it easier for the journalist to come along. I am on 07956 263088 should you wish to be available for interview.

Regards

Andy

1. Summary version of STRATEGIC ESTATES PLAN at http://eastlondonhcp.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/STRATEGIC-ESTATES-PLAN-summary.pdf

(2) Email sent by me to a TV news person at 11:20am

Dear TV News planner

Thank you for taking my call earlier.

As discussed we have a save King George A&E meeting tomorrow at 3pm at Ilford Town with a march assembling at 2pm outside the hospital.

Should you wish to send a journalist along, I expect we will be able to arrange people to meet you outside the hospital earlier if better for you.

There is a ongoing row about a 2018 failed £49M bid document to "reconfigure" King George and Queens hospitals. I say the document is still a live issue because at a Redbridge Clinical Commissioning Group meeting when challenged about the document, the NHS manager did not deny it was still part of their strategy, but continued to suppress it relying on the Freedom of Information process.

An audio Facebook recording is here, the NHS manager speaks at the end of the meeting.

Andy Walker

Andy Walker Andy Walker was live.

I say suppressing the document undermines our local democracy. How can our politicians and the public have influence about what is happening to our NHS when such key documents are kept secret?

My claim that there is a new plan to close King George A&E is also contested. Keith Prince AM and Wes Streeting MP support the immediate and full publication of the bid document. Cllr Athwal the Leader of Redbridge Council does not want the document released nor will he speak at the meeting tomorrow for the reasons at the Facebook broadcast here Andy Walker Cllr Athwal speaks towards the end of the video.

Andy Walker Andy Walker was live.

A  key document is being suppressed in an effort to cover up legitimate public and political scrutiny  of a new plan to close King George A&E. If  NHS disagree they have to do is publish the document.

Wes Streeting MP differs calling me "highly irresponsible" , but as mentioned above he and Keith Prince want the document published. Mike Gapes MP has not said anything about this £49M bid so far.

Labour party members Sam Tarry, who previously worked on Jeremy Corbyn's campaign and Sonia Klein, a previous Labour parliamentary candidate will be on the platform tomorrow to speak against the new plan to close King George A&E.

Regards

Andy Walker

120 Blythswood Road IG3 8SG

PS more info below

Sent: Thursday, 28 March 2019, 21:13:07 GMT

Subject: Can you help promote the Save King George A&E rally this Saturday 2pm 30th March outside King George to a meeting at 3pm at Ilford Town

Dear KGH Campaigners 

There will be a save King George A&E rally this Saturday at 3pm at Ilford Town Hall with a walk from King George at 2pm.

Speakers are at the poster attached. Since printing the poster Labour members Sam Tarry, Sonia Klein will also be speaking. 

I regret to say the meeting does not have complete support. Organisations supporting include Redbridge Trades Council and Ilford Momentum, although it must be said an effort has been made to build a cross party platform across the spectrum. 

Cllr Athwal has come out against, however, it must be said he has made the very welcome gesture of encouraging dissent by displaying a banner at the Town Hall per the post here:

http://savekinggeorgehospital.blogspot.com/2019/03/campaign-update-keith-prince-am-excels.html

A key aim of the 30th meeting is to get a 2018 £49M failed bid document to reconfigure King George and Queens to be published in full has the support of Keith Prince and Wes Streeting. However, they do not support my claim that a new plan to close King George A&E has been produced and is ongoing. I say the review of King George is a sham and for it to become genuine BHRUT have to be removed from the review and someone independent put in charge. Four of the speakers had a letter published in the Recorder internet version on this earlier this month which is copied at the end of this email.

There is a petition calling for the £49M bid to be published at the link below. The bid is not irrelevant history, BHRUT are still pursuing the bid per my tweet from the Redbridge CCG meeting today which has not been challenged by the CCG. 

https://www.change.org/p/redbridge-council-end-the-cover-up-about-the-new-plan-to-close-king-george-a-e

An event page is at 

https://www.facebook.com/events/935452863511949/

Time FM press at 

https://www.time1075.net/145145-2-calls-release-king-george-hospital-bid/

The three funding proposals which included the £49M bid to reconfigure King George and Queens need to withdrawn and new proposals with greater funding sought and involve council scrutiny committees per the petition here:

https://www.change.org/p/redbridge-council-stop-the-new-plan-to-close-king-george-a-e-support-the-walk-and-meeting-on-30th-march

As yet Mike Gapes has made no comment on the meeting.

Regards

Andy

Recorder letter below

Bob Archer, secretary, Redbridge Trades Council; Cllr Nic Dodin, Havering; Pete Mason, Socialist Party and RoseMary Warrington, prospective Parliamentary Candidate, write:

The Ambulatory Care Unit at King George Hospital, which provides same day emergency care for the elderly frail discriminates against the younger patients who are transferred to Queen’s.

When challenged about this, NHS managers say that the “low levels of admitted adult patients” at King George justify this discrimination.

This argument does not stand scrutiny. Other hospitals in east London provide ambulatory care for all ages. Worthing Hospital, with a high proportion of elderly residents, provides ambulatory care for all residents. NHS managers have failed to deliver on a promise to provide a briefing on January 21.

Without this briefing, it seems reasonable to believe that the discrimination is motivated by the new plan to close King George A&E and turn King George into a centre of excellence for the elderly published in October 2018. Local NHS managers sought £49m funding to implement this new plan to close King George A&E despite committing to a review of the closure in 2017.

There is a walk from King George Hospital at 2pm for a meeting at 3pm Ilford Town Hall on March 30 to say this new plan to close King George A&E needs to be scrapped and that local NHS managers are not suited to carry out the review into King George as they are biased in favour of closing King George A&E

Campaign update: Keith Prince AM excels while Cllr Athwal helps & then disappoints

I met with Keith Prince on Monday of this week to make the case for why the £49M bid document to "reconfigure" King George and Queens be published. My efforts to meet with Cllr Athwal on the same subject were rebuffed.

On Tuesday morning Keith spoke at a Barkingside21 meeting and announced he would be writing to BHRUT to seek the immediate publication of the £49M bid document.

Also on Tuesday Cllr Athwal put up the banner on the Town Hall, which was very welcome.

Later on Tuesday evening I asked Councillor Athwal to speak at the meeting on the 30th and call for £49M bid to be published.

To my surprise he declined to do so per the video at the link below, the exchange is towards the end of the film.

I am baffled as to how Cllr Athwal can represent Redbridge residents to the best of his ability when he does not know what is in the bid. For all we know £45M of the bid monies could be spent at Queens and £4M on King George. The way to end the speculation is to publish the bid.

I would expect Cllr Athwal to know the detail of a cross borough bid regarding other services for education, policing etc. It is baffling that he does not want to see the detail of a major bid for health monies.

Let's hope Cllr Athwal changes tack on this issue. Keith changed position on the Fairlop plain markets after thinking things through, this is an example for Cllr Athwal to follow. Event page for the 30th meeting is below:

https://www.facebook.com/events/935452863511949/

& video below

https://www.facebook.com/andywalker19/videos/10218949972088052/?t=7

1) BHRUT cover up about the new plan to close King George A&E & so overload Queens 2) Conservative speaker requested for 30th March Save KGH A&E meeting

Dear Havering Councillors

On the Time Fm site today BHRUT deny there is any new plan to close King George A&E or that there is any cover up going on about the new plan to close King George A&E.

The 2011 plan to close King George A&E at https://www.healthemergency.org.uk/peoplesinquiry/pdf/NE%20London%20Decision%20Making%20Business%20Case%2002%2012%2010%20FINAL%20V1.0.pdf

lists at page 27 £35.9M of works at four hospitals to close King George A&E.

Rather than close King George A&E, the word reconfiguration is used at page 11

“King George was identified as the most suitable hospital to be reconfigured”. It is the key code word for closure. A search for “reconfigur” shows 142 matches in the 2011 plan. Type in “close King” and zero matches are produced.

I have attended BHRUT board meetings for years and the word reconfigure always means close King George A&E.

So the BHRUT claim that a £49M plan to reconfigure King George A&E has nothing to do with closing King George cannot bear scrutiny. The only way for BHRUT to persuade anyone of their case is to publish the bid document, they cannot do this because their case would fall apart.

The BHRUT denial on the Time FM site is copied below:

The trust has denied that the bid involved a proposal to close or reconfigure the hospital.

A spokesperson for BHRUT said: “The £49 million was to make a range of improvements to urgent and emergency care at both hospitals, including the emergency department at KGH, as well as increasing the size of our assessment units and rearranging some of the ward configurations – again across both sites – to improve patient flow.”

Their statement that the £49M bid has nothing to the plan to “reconfigure” King George is false. Their very own denial says “rearranging some of the ward configurations” which is another way of saying “reconfigure” which means “close”

The BHRUT press department remind me of the saying that diplomats are good men sent abroad to lie for their country. BHRUT's communications staff may not lie for the trust, but there can be no doubt that use language differently from the rest of us.

The case of ambulatory care at King George is an example. At first BHRUT denied, without any qualification, the very existence of an ambulatory care unit at King George regarding my claims of unlawful discrimination at the King George unit . It was only when challenged with photographic evidence did they clarify, that yes, there was an ambulatory care unit. The exchange between BHRUT and me is at https://twitter.com/Andywalker1945/status/1088844599752343555

So I stand by my claims of a cover up at BHRUT per the email sent to email to Redbridge Councillors last week and on Tome FM. Following my email Cllr Athwal agreed to put up a banner at the Town Hall promoting the 30^th Save King George A&E rally.

We have Labour, Socialist, Green and Trade Union speakers, we really need a Conservative speaker to make for a cross party platform. Once a Conservative party speaker is on board, we can approach faith speakers. The ambition being to unite the political and faith communities together to say the new plan to close King George A&E must be stopped.

The Facebook event page is at https://www.facebook.com/events/935452863511949/

Regards

Andy Walker

email follows

Dear Councillors

Cover up Claim

Yesterday a group of us were outside King George Hospital for a photo shoot to say the full bid document for the failed £49M bid for acute reconfiguration at King George and Queens hospital be published immediately.

After the photo some of us went into the BHRUT board meeting to hear Cllr Dodin ask the board to publish the bid document. The board declined citing cost grounds and claimed that the £49M bid had nothing to do with closing King George A&E. No comment was made on a recent Health Service Journal article implying BHRUT was looking to pursue this £49M bid by other means, presumably by land sales.

The board statement denying the £49M bid has nothing to do with closing KGH A&E does not stand scrutiny. Acute reconfiguration of King George and Queens means closing King George A&E. There is compelling evidence that the £49M bid is for preparatory works to close King George A&E. My allegation is that the board are conducting a cover up. If the bid were published in full it would show BHRUT were planning to close King George A&E in direct contradiction to their claim to be conducting an impartial review. Once the truth of a £49M closure plan comes out, calls for the review of King George A&E to be taken out of the hands of BHRUT and put with independent experts will grow.

The easiest way for BHRUT to refute my allegation is for them to publish the bid.

The Evidence for the cover up claim

I quote from page 15 of the summary version of the Estates Strategy Plan at

http://eastlondonhcp.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/STRATEGIC-ESTATES-PLAN-summary.pdf

This is the new plan to close King George A&E, but rather labelling it as a closure plan, two options for change are given as follows:

Current options for change

Queen’s Hospital Queen’s Hospital has one of the busiest and largest emergency departments in England, and so development at Queen’s will be focused on emergency and acute medicine, emergency surgery and acute children’s services. In addition, maternity facilities could also be expanded and developed to manage the continued growth in the number of births in north east London. To facilitate this development, the renal unit at Queens could be moved to the new St. George’s hub with non-acute care of older people, and some elective surgical services moved to King George Hospital.

King George Hospital. We aspire to develop a new centre of excellence for healthy ageing, working in collaboration with community care, primary care and social services to offer a fully integrated model of healthcare for older people. Centralising planned care will increase the use of beds and theatres. These changes, together with the adjacent Goodmayes Hospital site, create a strategic opportunity to develop a coherent masterplan for housing, education, community and primary health care, maximising land value across the two hospital sites.” (my emphasis, note no future for emergency and acute medicine at King George)

& then at page 18

“Sustainability and transformation partnership capital funding A new national £2.6bn capital fund was announced in the 2017 budget. In July 2018 STPs were invited to submit funding bids for schemes with a total value of over £100km, and schemes they aimed to deliver before 2022/23.

The Partnership submitted bids for the following projects

• St Georges Hospital – a new community hub

• Whipps Cross Hospital redevelopment programme management costs

• St James’s Health Centre new development

• Queens and King George Hospitals reconfiguration £49M

• City and Hackney primary care improvements

• Expansion of Queens Hospital maternity unit £14M

• Children’s and Young Person’s Assessment Unit at Queen’s Hospital £8M

• Barts Health Orthopaedic Centre at Newham Hospital” ENDs (my emphasis I have inserted costings obtained last month)

The three options in bold regarding reconfiguration, maternity and children all progress the so called “options” for King George & Queens and make major steps to turn them into a reality.

BHRUT have no difficulty with two of the these three bids doing what they say on the tin. The £14M maternity bid is for maternity, the £8M children bid is for children. The last bid and by the far the largest at £49M is for reconfiguration, this has always meant works to close King George A&E. For BHRUT to deny this claim is nonsense, unless they are prepared to disclose the full bid document, which they are not, a cover up is taking place.

Tonight at full council, I ask Cllr Athwal to speak at a save King George A&E meeting on the 30^th March. His support on the 30^th March would be very much appreciated.

It would be great if you could attend the walk from King George Hospital on the 30^thMarch at 2pm to a meeting for 3pm at Ilford Town Hall.

Regards

Andy Walker

https://savekinggeorgehospital.blogspot.com/2019/03/writing-to-councillors-in-redbridge.html

Writing to Councillors in Redbridge, Barking & Dagenham and Havering regarding the cover up about King George A&E

Dear Councillors

Cover up Claim

Yesterday a group of us were outside King George Hospital for a photo shoot to say the full bid document for the failed £49M bid for acute reconfiguration at King George and Queens hospital be published immediately.

After the photo some of us went into the BHRUT board meeting to hear Cllr Dodin ask the board to publish the bid document. The board declined citing cost grounds and claimed that the £49M bid had nothing to do with closing King George A&E. No comment was made on a recent Health Service Journal article implying BHRUT was looking to pursue this £49M bid by other means, presumably by land sales.

The board statement denying the £49M bid has nothing to do with closing KGH A&E does not stand scrutiny. Acute reconfiguration of King George and Queens means closing King George A&E. There is compelling evidence that the £49M bid is for preparatory works to close King George A&E. My allegation is that the board are conducting a cover up. If the bid were published in full it would show BHRUT were planning to close King George A&E in direct contradiction to their claim to be conducting an impartial review. Once the truth of a £49M closure plan comes out, calls for the review of King George A&E to be taken out of the hands of BHRUT and put with independent experts will grow.

The easiest way for BHRUT to refute my allegation is for them to publish the bid.

The Evidence for the cover up claim

I quote from page 15 of the summary version of the Estates Strategy Plan at

http://eastlondonhcp.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/STRATEGIC-ESTATES-PLAN-summary.pdf

This is the new plan to close King George A&E, but rather labelling it as a closure plan, two options for change are given as follows:

Current options for change

Queen’s Hospital Queen’s Hospital has one of the busiest and largest emergency departments in England, and so development at Queen’s will be focused on emergency and acute medicine, emergency surgery and acute children’s services. In addition, maternity facilities could also be expanded and developed to manage the continued growth in the number of births in north east London. To facilitate this development, the renal unit at Queens could be moved to the new St. George’s hub with non-acute care of older people, and some elective surgical services moved to King George Hospital.

King George Hospital. We aspire to develop a new centre of excellence for healthy ageing, working in collaboration with community care, primary care and social services to offer a fully integrated model of healthcare for older people. Centralising planned care will increase the use of beds and theatres. These changes, together with the adjacent Goodmayes Hospital site, create a strategic opportunity to develop a coherent masterplan for housing, education, community and primary health care, maximising land value across the two hospital sites.” (my emphasis, note no future for emergency and acute medicine at King George)

& then at page 18

“Sustainability and transformation partnership capital funding A new national £2.6bn capital fund was announced in the 2017 budget. In July 2018 STPs were invited to submit funding bids for schemes with a total value of over £100km, and schemes they aimed to deliver before 2022/23.

The Partnership submitted bids for the following projects

• St Georges Hospital – a new community hub

• Whipps Cross Hospital redevelopment programme management costs

• St James’s Health Centre new development

• Queens and King George Hospitals reconfiguration £49M

• City and Hackney primary care improvements

• Expansion of Queens Hospital maternity unit £14M

• Children’s and Young Person’s Assessment Unit at Queen’s Hospital £8M

• Barts Health Orthopaedic Centre at Newham Hospital” ENDs (my emphasis I have inserted costings obtained last month)

The three options in bold regarding reconfiguration, maternity and children all progress the so called “options” for King George & Queens and make major steps to turn them into a reality.

BHRUT have no difficulty with two of the these three bids doing what they say on the tin. The £14M maternity bid is for maternity, the £8M children bid is for children. The last bid and by the far the largest at £49M is for reconfiguration, this has always meant works to close King George A&E. For BHRUT to deny this claim is nonsense, unless they are prepared to disclose the full bid document, which they are not, a cover up is taking place.

Tonight at full council, I ask Cllr Athwal to speak at a save King George A&E meeting on the 30^th March. His support on the 30^th March would be very much appreciated.

It would be great if you could attend the walk from King George Hospital on the 30^th March at 2pm to a meeting for 3pm at Ilford Town Hall.

Regards

Andy Walker

Councillor Dodin to ask for £49M bid document to be published at BHRUT board meeting on 20th March

I wrote to BHRUT secretary earlier today to table the following question on Cllr Dodin's behalf.

"Will this board publish in full the 2018 £49M bid to reconfigure King George and Queens?"

We meet for a photo shoot outside King George by the Barley Lane Entrance for midday.

More on this at :

https://savekinggeorgehospital.blogspot.com/2019/03/photo-shoot-wednesday-20th-march-midday.html

The Recorder are sending a photographer so it will be great to have a good turn out.

Photo shoot Wednesday 20th March midday outside King George Hospital on Barley Lane: Publish the £49M bid KGH A&E document!

BHRUT, the NHS managers responsible for King George and Queens Hospitals, made an unsuccessful bid to the central NHS for £49M for the "Acute Reconfigeration of Queens and King George Hospitals" in autumn 2018.

More on this HERE

An article in the Health Service Journal  has implied that BHRUT is seeking to fund this bid by alternative means see HERE

This matters because "acute reconfigeration" has always meant works to close King George A&E.
We do not know for certain what it is in the bid because we do not know what is in the bid document because it has not been published.

Usually if a £49M bid to "improve" our NHS had been knocked back by central government, our MPs and Cllrs would be making representations upon our behalf for the government to hand over the money. This is not happening as no one knows exactly what the £49M is for.

It must be concern that the £49M is to extend acute capacity at Queens, this means extra beds for emergency admissions.

On the face of it, this sounds a great thing, but the original closure plan implies that while acute capacity is increased at Queens, the overall acute capacity is reduced at the two hospitals.

The photo below is taken from the 2011 plan to close KGH A&E HERE

It shows huge cuts to medical staffing as a consequence of closing KGH A&E. So while, on the face of it, £49M to be spent to our local NHS sounds great, we really need to see the bid document to know what is going on.

My expectation is that the £49M would have/will be spent to help close KGH A&E. However, this is just speculation, we need to see the full bid document so we know what NHS managers intend for our hospitals.

The BHRUT board meet on the 20th at King George at 12:30pm hence the photo shoot before the meeting. We can go into the meeting for 12:30 and request that the bid document is published in full.

Why BHRUT need to publish this information on beds & death rates

I sent the following email to BHRUT seeking the following information to test the premise that past and any future bed cuts at King George are increasing death rates at Queens. The information I seek is crucial to discovering is this argument has merit. Email follows

Dear Sir or Madam

I request a review for the following reasons:

1 - Your point 1 refusing bed numbers, I say this must be published, the public have to right to know to important facts about what is happening in publicly  funded institutions such as hospitals, schools, prisons etc. BHRUT used to publish this information each month in their board papers to allow the public to view month what is happening with bed numbers at King George and Queens Hospitals.

Bed numbers are vital as they are linked to staffing numbers, bed occupancy and 4 hour A&E waits. I encourage you to immediately publish this key information. Anything else will undermine, in a small, but nonetheless real way, our local democracy. Cllr Zammett writes of the importance of bed numbers in the Recorder this week highlighting how important bed numbers are to the ongoing public conversation between NHS managers, elected representatives and residents. 

2- Your point 6 refusing bed occupancy for critical care beds. BHRUT used to release this information to me, it was used to campaign with elected representatives. I rely on the arguments I use in point 1 above. Withholding this information makes it more difficult for the  public and their elected representatives to campaign for extra critical care beds per the press article here. Again this information should be published immediately.

The link HERE has a story on critical care beds.

3 - Your point 8. I asked for the following:

"Your bed papers list excess deaths. Please can you send me excess deaths for each hospital site for the months of October, November & December 2018? For example where the board papers list say 'x' excess deaths for pneumonia, BHRUT supply me the information for King George and Queen’s excess deaths to arrive at the total of 'x'."

 BHRUT wrote:

"We are unable to provide this information."

This claim does not stand scrutiny.  You supplied similar information to me in the past per FOI 4318 which I attach below from 2016. Again I rely on the arguments above.

I wish to test the premise that past and any future bed cuts at King George are increasing death rates at Queens. The information I seek is crucial to discovering is this argument has merit.

Regards

Andy Walker