SUTTON COMMENTARY: Shocking scenes shown by BBC News this week should be a wake-up call for government and the NHS to revive previously approved plans for a state-of-the-art new hospital, writes DAVE BURTON
The problems facing St Helier Hospital, as highlighted on national television news this week, are not just a recent phenomenon.
Empty promises: even when the LibDems had a health minister in the coalition government, they failed to deliver for St Helier
St Helier has been used as a political football for decades, between the Liberal Democrats’ MPs and their party colleagues who control Sutton Council, and, mostly, the Conservatives in central government and council opposition.
The issue of health care in south west London remains a very sore subject, an open wound in desperate need of attention.
Hugh Pym, the BBC’s health correspondent, signed off his shocking report from the corridors of St Helier’s overwhelmed A&E department this week by saying: “Crowded and cramped in old buildings, doctors here say only a new hospital is the answer.”
For decades, the “Save St Helier” slogan has been the core vote winner for the LibDems, whose position on local health care has wavered towards whatever stance keeps the slogan alive. But it’s not politicians trying to close St Helier. It never has been. There has never been a local or national proposal to close the hospital. The real culprit is the fabric of the building.
Locally, clinicians have been clear for years that, for critical medicine, St Helier – built before the NHS existed, in the 1930s – is not fit for purpose.
They have long-backed proposals for a new critical care hospital alongside the Royal Marsden’s proposed Cancer Hub at Belmont. As part of these proposals, St Helier would still provide more than 80% of its existing services.
Clinicians work on better outcomes for patients, not politics.
St Helier’s main buildings pre-date the NHS. In May this year, Dr Ruth Charlton, the then chief medical officer of Epsom and St Helier University Hospitals NHS Trust, wrote an article for the Grauniad in which she said, “We, our patients and our staff, cannot afford to wait any more. The longer these delays, the more money it costs us – and the more difficult it gets to keep our patients safe…
Showing its age: St Helier has become too expensive to maintain, and far too costly yo rebuild
“Healthcare standards are getting higher while our hospitals are sliding into even more disrepair. When our lifts break down, we can’t even get the parts to repair them because they are no longer manufactured.
“We are delivering safe care – but it’s not easy in such a dilapidated and unpleasant environment, and I fear we won’t be able to provide the level of care we’d like to – or should be – for much longer.”
But that perspective is politically useless for many, with politicians thinking they know better than doctors.
While the £500million “Boris hospital” proposals for Belmont were real enough, the money to pay for it never was. As plans stalled, the Conservatives – who had won themselves a couple of parliamentary seats in Sutton since 2014 – undoubtedly suffered at the ballot box.
During the General Election campaign, Sutton’s Liberal Democrats seemed to forget their initial welcoming of the proposed Belmont hospital and upgrades to St Helier, and reverted to their tried-and-trusted, emotive “Save St Helier” vote-winner, and duly won back the Carshalton and Wallington and the Sutton and Cheam parliamentary seats.
Chaos in the corridors: BBC News showed shocking scenes from St Helier this week
But the Liberal Democrats’ own proposals for rebuilding services at St Helier are uncosted and reckoned to be impractical.
And besides, the Labour government has put all schemes on hold while it takes stock. So after years of consultations and reviews, St Helier is undergoing another review.
St Helier’s crumbling concrete buildings, almost 100 years old, are not economically salvageable, and certainly not as a critical care-based general hospital. Every day, it is falling further into ruin.
Its maintenance costs are of the same magnitude as a new building. Rebuilding critical care services on the same site while maintaining services would be prohibitively expensive, so some sort of compromise is urgently required or the “seasonal flu” scenes at St Helier shown on BBC News will become the new “normal”.
But try telling that to any politician or local pressure group. They’ll bite your head off, and sadly you’ll be waiting for hours in a corridor in A&E to have it sewn back on.
Read more: As Robotic Reeves ‘pauses’ hospital builds, St Helier crumbles
Read more: St Helier Hospital stretched to limits by a ‘tidal wave of flu’
Read more: Government cuts £100m from budget for new Sutton hospital
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For sure St Helier needs to be replaced by a new hospital but not adjacent to the Marsden as that’s just too far away from the people who live south of Sutton town and if you were on a blue light you would be dead before you got there, St Helier could be rebuilt more or less where it is as there are two large open spaces one opposite and one just down the road at Reigate avenue . Where the money comes from and where its to be built you can leave to the politicians to argue for another 20 years , which I confidently predict will be what happens.