Watchdog backs West Hertfordshire hospital development plans

At a meeting of the West Hertfordshire Hospital Trust health infrastructure plan topic group on Monday, the group discussed the trust's preferred option to spend the majority of government funding on refurbishing Watford General Hospital.

The topic group, working on behalf of Hertfordshire health scrutiny committee, agreed with the "broad proposal and rationale for the rebuild of Watford General Hospital and the redevelopment of St Albans City and Hemel Hempstead Hospitals on the existing sites".

The trust is currently in the process of developing an outline business case which is the second of a three-stage business case and approval process, with the trust working to deliver new buildings by 2025 or soon after.

Aerial CGI view of a redeveloped Watford General alongside the Riverwell development, which is around 1,000 homes

Among those at the meeting on Monday were campaigners who continue to fight for a new hospital to built on a new site central to Watford, St Albans, and Hemel Hempstead.

The meeting heard from Kevin Minier, chairman of Dacorum Patients Group, who said: "I think it’s my duty to share with this topic group the depth of distress that thousands of residents across West Hertfordshire and beyond have regarding the West Hertfordshire Hospitals Trust’s preferred option.

"Local residents have given years of their lives and given thousands of hours of their time to read documents, attend to meeting and respond to surveys and raise questions.

"Resilience is a key consideration. If the redevelopment of Watford General Hospital is delivered one year late, two years late, three years late or not at all or if the hospital is out of action for a period, how will that be managed?"

Steve Day, of campaign group Herts Valleys Hospital, which he said represents 9,000 people, told the group there had been "massive amounts of resistance to this programme. In fact I am not aware of anybody apart from local councillors and people in the NHS who actually support this programme".

St Albans City hospital

Helen Brown, deputy chief executive at the NHS Trust explained how the three hospital model being proposed broadly retains the existing services.

She said: "A substantial new build at Watford would bring fantastic opportunities to improve services. In our new facilities we are hoping to have significantly more single bed impatient rooms. We are looking at 75 to 80 per cent of all in patient accommodation in single rooms.

"St Albans will be our main surgical and cancer care site. It already is the site where we do a lot of planned surgery and we want to develop and enhance that service offer at St Albans. One of the key things we want to do at St Albans is improve and increase the amount of diagnostics provision there to support planned care pathways and a much better coordinated model.

"And Hemel Hempstead will be our main site for medical specialties, planned care and long-term conditions. And we will continue to provide the urgent treatment centre at Hemel Hempstead.

"At St Albans, we are in discussion at the moment with the clinical commissioning group about urgent care provision and would expect there would be some provision in relation to urgent care for St Albans going forward on the site."

Commenting about the meeting, a spokesman for the New Hospital Campaign (NHC), group called it a "farce" adding that it reached "truly bizarre conclusions, including that the trust’s plans did not amount to 'substantial development of service requiring formal consultation with the committee', even though it involved the expenditure of hundreds of millions of pounds with implications over many decades to come".

Speaking in response to the NHC comment, the chairman of the topic group, county councillor Richard Thake, said: "I absolutely believe we have accurately performed the functions and any arguments that might arise around that 'constitution' need to go via the parliamentary or judicial process route.

"To my mind, all other dialogue is inconsequential when viewed in the light of overriding essential of ‘best’ service delivery to the patients in need of assistance and professional help when illness strikes.

"I am fully convinced that this was the basic function of the scrutiny process I chaired and I sincerely hope that that our conclusions will ultimately assist in that delivery."