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
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 30th March. His support on the 30th
March would be very much appreciated.
It
would be great if you could attend the walk from King George Hospital
on the 30th March at 2pm to a meeting for 3pm at Ilford
Town Hall.
Regards
Andy Walker
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