HEMEL'S NEW MP FACES DAUNTING HEALTH IN-TRAY
Congratulations to David Taylor MP.
Hemel Hempstead elected a new MP yesterday as part of the Labour landslide that sees Keir Starmer take over in Downing Street.
David Taylor will have to tackle a wide variety of health and hospital issues. His last leaflet before the election was all about health, so he realises how important it is.
Here are just some of the issues he faces:
- Hemel people don't want Watford General. David must now be aware, from the doorstep and from reports of our public meeting, that people in Hemel don't want Watford General to be rebuilt in a hugely disruptive and unaffordable 7-year project. Will he follow the cross-party tradition of Hemel MPs opposing the Watford rebuild? His majority is under 5000, making it a marginal. He will surely have to take into account the views of his constituents. But in Watford, David's colleague Matt Turmaine has promised people that Watford General will be rebuilt. How will Labour square this circle?
- Financial woes at the West Herts Trust. The West Herts Trust is facing an £18.5m deficit this year - the poorest financial performance in the Herts and West Essex region. Cuts of £27m are being applied - how will David be monitoring the impact of the cuts on patient services? There may be no money for David's idea of a Community Hospital for Hemel.
- Mount Vernon crisis. Vital new premises for the crumbling Mount Vernon Cancer Centre are seemingly being held up by disgraceful NHS dithering. The problem is that a crucial move for MVCC cannot happen until the Watford General rebuild is finished - meaning a ten-year wait for a new MVCC. The obvious solution - a clear joint site for a new West Herts Hospital and a new MVCC - is apparently ruled out by West Herts' obsession with building at Watford. This is a story that reflects very badly on the NHS.
- Trust Board does not reflect Dacorum views. Key decisions on hospitals for the 155000 people of Dacorum are made by the unelected Board of the West Herts Trust, which has NOT ONE independent member from the Borough. David has expressed his concern in the past and should now demand urgent action to correct a situation which is totally unacceptable. How was this ever allowed to happen?
- GP and dental access problems. GP access is hard for everybody now, but some Hemel practices are worse than others. How can the worst learn from the best? Dental deserts are rife all over the country - how can the NHS tackle that problem in Hemel and other parts of West Herts?
HEALTH ACTION GROUP SEND TOUGH QUESTIONS TO WEST HERTS TRUST
Dacorum Health Action Group (DHAG) has demanded answers from West Herts Hospitals Trust to a series of tough questions from the general public about the way the Trust is running our services.
Issues raised in the questions, submitted at last week's pre-election public meeting organised by DHAG, included:
- Why is the Trust refusing to own up to the likely cost of the Watford General rebuild?
- How will the deficit-ridden Trust pay for the Watford General rebuild?
- How will the impact on patients and staff of the Trust's £27m annual cuts be monitored?
- How will the Trust keep services running at Watford General during the disruptive seven-year rebuild?
The questions are at the link below:
Questions West Herts for Candidates meeting 24.6.24
WATFORD GENERAL PLANS GET THUMBS DOWN AT HEMEL ELECTION MEETING
A pre-election meeting of more than 150 people in Hemel Hempstead earlier this week saw overwhelming rejection of the plans to rebuild Watford General Hospital.
Many people called on the NHS to look at options for a clear new site with better access than the cramped and crumbling Vicarage Road facility.
Four general election candidates taking part in the meeting, organised by Dacorum Health Action Group at Hemel Methodist Church, also expressed concern about the £1.4bn, 7-year Watford project.
The Labour Party did not provide a representative.
There was widespread support from candidates and the audience for much better hospital services in Hemel Hempstead.
Public feedback after the meeting showed the depth of feeling about our hospitals and the undemocratic way the West Herts Hospitals Trust decides on investment.
Photo credit: Gary Norman
NEW GOVERNMENT TO GAMBLE YOUR MONEY ON WASTEFUL WATFORD GENERAL
The new government is now certain to risk at least £1.4bn on rebuilding at Watford General.
Labour yesterday committed itself to the towering infirmary project at Watford General. The Tories have said they would do the same.
BUT A DEVASTATING AND DETAILED NEW ANALYSIS BY DACORUM HEALTH ACTION GROUP AND THE NEW HOSPITAL CAMPAIGN SHOWS THAT THIS WILL BE A BIG FINANCIAL GAMBLE - AS WELL AS A BAD DEAL FOR PATIENTS ACROSS WEST HERTS
The report, 'Unaffordable and Unfair - the Wasteful Watford Hospital Project' reveals that the plans for Watford General:
• Will cause years of disruption that will affect patients and staff
• Are unaffordable and unfair
• Will not meet the needs of people across West Herts
• Are likely to place the West Hertfordshire Teaching Hospitals Trust in a very difficult financial position, which would have worrying repercussions for patient care.
The link to the report is below:
BED CUTS ON WAY IN WATFORD REBUILD?
Recent changes to the plans for Watford General's new facility will likely mean a slightly lower set of tower blocks.
Instead of the threatened 16 storey, 260 foot monster, a video shows one that features three towers of 12 or maybe 13 storeys each - the hospital equivalent of 18 or 19 residential floors.
That's good news - the New Hospital Campaign has been attacking the plans for the tallest NHS building outside central London, so we won't complain if it's scaled down a bit.
BUT THERE IS A BIG CATCH
Reducing the scale of the buildings may mean lopping several wards off each tower - with the loss of a fair number of beds.
That could well mean that the new Watford Hospital facility will have too few beds for our future needs.
The original plans for the new Watford building would have seen enough room for the 960-plus beds needed for the next few decades in West Hertfordshire.
But a lower building at Watford would not be able to accommodate the beds we should have. It would probably have fewer beds than we have now.
The problem, of course, is the tiny site left for redevelopment at Watford - it's just not big enough.
New thinking is needed about a new site - but don't expect it from our local NHS bosses
MOUNT VERNON CONSULTATION COULD UPEND WATFORD GENERAL PLANS
There was very bad news for the West Herts Trust recently as the NHS decided to ask the public what should happen to the Mount Vernon Cancer Centre (MVCC). A public consultation is being planned for later this year.
MVCC is an excellent facility and serves a big population in the south and east.
But it's falling down and urgently needs replacement next to an acute hospital where patients can be supported if they are very ill during cancer treatment.
The NHS want to build a replacement building squeezed in between Watford General and Watford FC, but that would almost certainly mean one of two very poor outcomes. Either:
- Building at the same time as the towering West Herts infirmary is constructed at Watford General, causing even more chaos, contamination, noise and dust for patients in the existing hospital, or
- Waiting to start building until the tower blocks are finished - 2031 is the target but 2032 is more likely.
The second is much more likely. That will mean a decade more of crumbling at MVCC.
Surely the NHS should urgently consider a potentially quicker and certainly better solution - a clear new site for both West Herts new acute hospital AND MVCC.
The Trust will be upset with the consultation as it opens up the possibility of a solution that does not involve their beloved Vicarage Road site.
The New Hospital Campaign will be putting this case when the MVCC consultation starts.
MISLEADING MARKHAM SHOULD LOOK AT THE DICTIONARY
Health Minister Lord Markham does not know the meaning of the word 'independent'.
In a letter to a local MP Markham claims that the choice of Watford General for the emergency and specialist hospital was based on 'an independent feasibility study in August 2020,'
This is a misleading statement.
This refers to a Site Feasibility Study (SFS) commissioned by West Herts Trust, which concluded that building a new hospital at Watford General would be much quicker than building on a new clear site. This gave a green light to the Watford project.
But the SFS's conclusions were not supported by the evidence. It was a poor report, which admitted that its conclusions were only 'subjective'.
Yet absurdly the Government still use the SFS as the only substantial bit of technical evidence for Watford General.
And the SFS was not independent.
Collins dictionary contains this definition:
An independent inquiry or opinion is one that involves people who are not connected with a particular situation, and should therefore be fair.
The Site Feasibility Study was done by a 'company' called RFL Property Services Ltd (RFLPS). Sounds independent - but it's not.
According to its LinkedIn profile, RFLPS is a 100% wholly owned subsidiary of Royal Free London Group (RFLG). Set up in 2018, RFL's main job is to be the estates and property department of that big London hospital system.
So RFLPS.
- Is effectively part of the NHS, like the West Herts Trust. Nine of RFLPS's directors over the years have shared their address with the Royal Free London Group or Trust
- Were already working on the West Herts projects - something that wasn't disclosed in the SFS
But there's more. The two Trusts have been very close to each other. In October 2018, the Royal Free London Trust and West Herts announced that they had “joined forces as part of a new clinical partnership. The partnership follows months of close collaboration between the two trusts.” It wasn't just clinicians - the Trusts worked together over recent years on digital systems, occupational health and bids for ultrasound contracts
There was no way RFL could take an unbiased, fair and balanced view of the arguments for and against locating the new hospital at Watford General. This is known as a conflict of interest. The close corporate relationships between RFL's owners and W Herts should have been made clear, but they weren't.
The judgement of the SFS is not valid because it is not independent. The Trust have no solid evidence for pushing ahead at Watford General.
Hemel and St Albans Hospitals lose key government funding
The Government’s flagship £20 bn-plus New Hospital Programme (NHP) has pulled out of funding Hemel Hempstead and St Albans Hospitals.
With costs of Watford General’s planned new towering infirmary soaring towards £1.3 bn, the other two hospitals will now have to be funded by the local NHS, including the deficit-ridden West Herts Trust.
That casts serious doubts on the prospects for hospital services in the two towns. There has already been a delay to the construction of some new facilities at St Albans.
The Trust originally assumed that the NHP would allocate money to build at Hemel and St Albans.
Now all the Trust’s NHP capital allocation will go to the Vicarage Road site, where projected costs have doubled in the last four years.
Confirmation that Hemel and St Albans have been cast adrift by the NHP came in a letter from Government Minister Lord Markham to Hemel Hempstead MP Sir Mike Penning.
Lord Markham said:
‘The NHP scheme for West Hertfordshire is for a fully funded new hospital at Watford. Whilst redevelopment work at Hemel Hempstead Hospital and St Albans City Hospital will not be part of the NHP scheme, improvements at these sites will continue to be supported by the Trust in line with their their planned approach and in collaboration with the local Integrated Care Board (ICB)’
The Trust is a long way off the financial stability it will need to fund the new Watford Hospital. It should be nearly breaking even now, but instead it faces an £18 m deficit this year and another deficit next year. Main construction work on the Watford facility will not begin until the end of 2026 – nearly three years away.
The case for a proper review of these impractical and unaffordable plans for Watford General is getting clearer by the day. There is plenty of time to consider the advantages of a new hospital on a clear new accessible site.
.
WATFORD GENERAL MATERNITY - TRUST DIRECTOR SPEAKS OUT
West Herts Trust non-executive director Jonathan Rennison has publicly criticised the culture of Watford General's maternity unit. Speaking in a Trust Board meeting on Thursday, Jonathan also talked about the responsibility of senior management and the Board. Referring to the maternity unit, he said:
“There are a small number of people, but they are very vocal and they are in some senior positions and they drive some poor behaviours as well as a narrative that undermines [inaudible] culture and I think we just really need to be clear that that isn’t acceptable behaviour. There are professional standards for how you work with others, how you have professional respect, how you treat others and we have to be clear about that and start driving that change more ….
“It’s about how we start to empower staff to feel comfortable with that and that they know that we will have their back and that there won’t be any retribution for calling out bad behaviour because that’s where it falls down, it’s the bystander effect. People are afraid to step in and call it out because they see what has happened to others. So we have to be more vocal and we have to be setting that tone and that message around this (Trust Board) table as well, and saying it’s not acceptable because otherwise that change never happens. It has to be set from the top.
“So great work has been done and I have to say Mitra [Bakhtiari, Director of Midwifery and Gynaecology, who is leaving the Trust] has been an exemplar in terms of her behaviour and she does call it out and gets an awful lot of unpleasant backlash that we are not necessarily aware of around this table and it’s about saying that is not acceptable. Just to say thank you to Mitra again for the work she has done ...When she goes we need others to be stepping up and to be doing what Mitra has been doing so we don’t have that gap.”
A senior clinician responded by pointing to ongoing work to get the culture of Maternity better, including a number of recent events aimed at improving working relationships, notably a senior midwifery awayday and a consultant awayday. There are more programmes planned. In terms of improving the culture, he said, “We are on the right path”.
TRUST BUY A £13.6 MILLION FLOOD RISK
The West Herts Trust have just spent £13.6 million on an acre of land that suffers from a high risk of flooding.
And they will have to raise the floor level of a major part of the new Watford Hospital by NEARLY FIVE FEET to make sure it doesn't get flooded by surface water.
The Trust have had to pay that enormous sum (about four times the going rate for similar land) to accommodate the front entrance of their new tower blocks. They don't seem to have read their own Watford General planning application from 2021, which said that:
there are some small areas of the site, predominantly at the south corner / low lying areas, which are shown at high risk of pluvial [surface water] flooding. This correlates with the existing site topography, the southern corner of the site being the lowest area of the site and, therefore surface water ponding may occur.
A 'high risk' - the worst category for flooding danger - means that ' each year this area has a chance of flooding of greater than 1 in 30 (3.3%).' With climate change, that chance may be growing.
So the Trust's advisers say, in the planning documents:
It is recommended that the proposed finish floor level of the building located at the south corner of the site are set at above 54.5m AOD [AOD is basically sea level] (53.00m AOD TBC +1.2m + 0.3m freeboard),
which is above the predicted probable pluvial flood level.
In plain English, that means that the front entrance of the new towering hospital will have to be 1.5 metres above the existing ground to keep patients and staff in the dry.
THIS COULD END UP BEING THE MOST EXPENSIVE POND IN THE NHS.