Another delay for Hospital closure plan

  • Councillors and others backing the closure of Hemel Hospital face more disappointment this week 
  • The plan to replace the Hospital with a 'neighbourhood health centre' on Market Square is already four months behind schedule 
  • Regional NHS bosses must approve the plan to cram what's left of the Hospital onto just three floors
  • The downgrade SHOULD have been on the agenda for a key meeting in November 2025 
  • But there was no progress then
  • The bosses are meeting again this Friday, but once again it's not on the agenda
  • That means further delay for the £135m closure plan
  • The reasons for the continued hold-up are not known, but finance may be one problem
  • The cost of the Hemel plan is at least THREE TIMES MORE than for any other 'neighbourhood health centre' planned in England
  • Perhaps regional bosses have realised there are better things to spend their (our) scarce money on than just moving services across Marlowes?

by philip

Hemel Hospital - reduced to less than three floors

  • Services moved from the seven-hectare (18-acre) Hemel General Hospital site would be crammed onto less than three floors in the planned 'neighbourhood health centre' Hub in Market Square
  • We have seen only one floor plan for the 'health centre' - from 2023
  • It shows hospital services would have to share 8000 square metres with community health services, admin (service support), a building plant floor, shops  - and eateries
  • The plan talks of 'WHTH' and 'ICB' on Ground floor and levels 1 and 2. 
  • These would be the remnants of our 200-year-old hospital services.
  • The ground floor would see the town's Urgent Treatment Centre rubbing shoulders with 'Retail/F&B' - meaning shops, food and beverage outlets
  • The Government plans to have neighbourhood health centres funded through 'a mix of public-private partnership and public capital'.
  • Below is the floor plan for the 'neighbourhood health centre'.

 

by philip

Hemel's incredible shrinking Hospital

  • Hemel stands to lose a big public asset if our seven-hectare Hospital is demolished
  • The substitute would be a Market Square 'neighbourhood health centre' Hub on just half a hectare
  • The buildings currently in use at our Hospital have nearly 20,000 square metres of floor space
  • The 'health centre' Hub downgrade will have just 8000 square metres 
  • And where would patients park, especially those who find it hard to walk?
  • Some Hemel Hospital buildings are newish and in better condition than many at Watford General
  • Yet the Council and West Herts Trust bosses claim the 'health centre' will be better able to meet the hospital needs of a town with thousands of new homes and an ageing population
  • There are various plans to provide a convenient new or refurbished Hospital building on the present site - up to 12,000 square metres.
  • These plans would also allow for housing on part of the site - Government targets have to be met
  • Surely developing the current Hospital site would be a much better choice for the future ?

by philip

NHS expert verdict - existing buildings are good for health centres

  • Top NHS experts say new neighbourhood health centres (NHCs)  should use existing buildings where possible
  • That could be bad news for those who support the Market Square Hub
  • NHS Property Services (NHSPS) recently called for 'Optimising the existing estate' for the centres because 'in many instances refurbishments and extensions are cheaper and quicker [than new builds]'
  • A major December 2025 NHSPS report also said 'The existing estate offers many opportunities to develop NHCs now'
  • The controversial plan for a new £135m Hub NHC in the Market Square is well out of line with this expert opinion
  • The Market Square Hub would also be hugely more expensive than other NHCs
  • The maximum projected cost of an NHC is likely to be somewhere between £20m and £40m
  • It is not known why the Hemel NHC should cost the taxpayer at least THREE TIMES AS MUCH as any other NHC
  • This failure to control Market Square costs may help to explain why the scheme has not yet been given the go-ahead by the regional NHS
  • These are links to the NHSPS document:

https://www.property.nhs.uk/media/px4cufab/nhsps-making-nhcs-a-reality.pdf

nhsps-making-nhcs-a-reality (1)

by philip

How many flats for the Water Gardens car parks?

  • We need proper public consultation now on the future of Hemel's Water Gardens car parks
  • It's nearly THREE YEARS since the car parks - key to the setting of the lovely listed Water Gardens - were first advertised to 'investors' as 'opportunity sites' for building on
  • The Council set out a 'Town Centre Vision' in July 2023. It wants it to be 'a leisure and cultural hub'
  • The car parks would 'need to respond to the changing context through the intensification of developments and activities.' 
  •  A 'joint team' from Housebuilders Hill Group and the Council are now working on affordable housing plans 
  • They are also seeking hundreds of car spaces for the Market Square 'neighbourhood health centre'
  • The planned number of flats or houses has not been made public - that should be put right NOW
  • This is the link to the Town Centre Vision:

https://thinkhemel.com/investors/the-opportunity-sites/

 

 

by philip

NHS bosses fail in bid for fast-track closure of Hemel Hospital

  • Inspectors throw out NHS bid to make it easier to close our Hospital
  • NHS bosses wanted the right to close local health facilities without going through local planning 
  • NHS Property Services claimed  'the form of any health provision [is] a decision for local health commissioners and should not be constrained by planning policy.' 
  • These 'local health commissioners' are unelected civil servants and Board members
  • The NHS wanted the Dacorum Local Plan to say our health premises could be closed 'Where healthcare facilities are formally declared surplus to the operational requirements of the NHS or identified as surplus as part of a published estates strategy or transformation plan,'
  • This would have made it a lot easier to close Hemel Hospital without consulting us
  • Dacorum Health Action Group Chair Philip Aylett raised the issue with Government inspectors at yesterday's public session on the Local Plan
  • The Inspectors made it clear that this fast-track Hospital closure bid would not be allowed
  • The NHS and Council will have to go through proper planning to make the case for their plans to close Hemel Hospital and replace it with a 'neighbourhood health centre' on Market Square

by philip

West Herts Trust gets low ratings for food, privacy and dignity

  • The West Herts Trust was crowned 'Trust of the Year' recently, seeing solid improvements to A&E waiting times and other clinical performance scores
  • But patients - and staff - don't seem too impressed with other things, to judge by a recent survey
  • The Trust struggled in parts of the 2025 Patient-Led Assessments of the Care Environment (PLACE) Programme. These assessments are 'an annual appraisal of the non-clinical aspects of NHS and independent/private healthcare settings'
  • The assessors are teams made up of members of the public (known as patient assessors) and staff.  
  • West Herts was among England's bottom five on privacy, dignity and wellbeing, with a rating of 78.29% against a national average of 89%
  • That was 13% better than the 2024 score, when West Herts was the worst acute trust in the country 
  • Food at West Herts scored 84.04%, against a national average of about 92% 
  • Cleanliness was slightly above the average, at 98.75%.
  • The Health Service Journal article on the PLACE ratings is here:

PLACE ratings

by philip

Hub 'partners' fall out over future of Market Square

  • There is a dispute between the 'partners' who are pushing for the closure of Hemel Hospital
  • West Herts Trust bosses are keen that the replacement six-storey 'neighbourhood health centre' Hub should block the views from Marlowes to the Water Gardens
  • But the other 'partner' Dacorum Council is having second thoughts 
  • Heritage watchdog Historic England attacked the idea of plonking the Hub in the middle of the open Square
  • The Council agreed, and now thinks the the Hub should be built on the northern edge of the Square instead
  • The Council now wants to retain a 'public square facing onto the Water Gardens'
  • But the NHS bosses don't want that small concession included in the Local Plan
  • Of course the best idea would be to use the existing Hospital site 
  •  Why are NHS bosses so determined to ruin our town?

by philip

NHS bosses want to demolish our Hospital for this - 639 flats

  • West Herts NHS Trust are bosses planning to completely demolish Hemel Hospital and fill the site with 639 flats and a school
  • The figure for flats is 189 more than are included in current plans
  • This picture is from a Trust paper sent to Government inspectors considering Dacorum's Local Plan
  • The trees are not to scale!
  • Some of the Hospital services will be moved into a 'neighbourhood health centre' on or near the Market Square

 

by philip

NHS bosses want big rise to 639 flats on Hemel Hospital site

  • NHS bosses want to increase the number of flats planned for the Hemel Hospital site by over 40% to 639
  • The extra flats would help raise funds for the £135m 'neighbourhood health centre' Hub on the Market Square
  • Current plans would already allow for 450 flats and a new hospital building on the 12-acre Hemel Hospital site 
  • But now NHS bosses are pushing instead for complete demolition of the Hospital to accommodate the extra flats
  • Dacorum Council says the NHS bid to increase flat numbers is 'welcome', because it provides 'further flexibility on the number of homes that can be delivered in the plan period'.
  • The details of the increased housing demands are set out in a 'Statement of Common Ground' as part of work on the Dacorum Local Plan
  • The link to the Statement is below (go to DBC/ED46 near the bottom of the page):
  • https://letstalk.dacorum.gov.uk/examination-documents

by philip