Berko, Tring and Villages to lose out in Hospital closure
- NHS bosses and Dacorum Council have agreed to strict limits on local services after Hemel Hospital closes
- Key Local Plan document confirms that Market Square ‘health centre’ Hub will only serve Hemel, not Dacorum as a whole
- Hub will just provide ‘hospital and other specialist facilities that serve the wider needs of the town [Hemel]’
- Hospital needs of Berkhamsted, Tring and the villages are not mentioned in the Plan, which sets the framework for our future
- NHS and Council agreed to keep this highly restrictive wording in a Statement during recent Local Plan inquiry
- And the Local Plan also gives the green light to continued rundown of local hospital services
- It says: ‘When delivered, [the Market Square Hub] will likely replace much of the remaining facilities on the existing hospital site’
- The NHS wanted to remove ‘likely’ and replace ‘much’ with ‘all’ but the Council insisted on this wording remaining.
- The key there is ‘remaining’
- This means that services LEFT OVER at the Hospital at the time when the Hub is completed – possibly the early 2030s – would be transferred to the Hub
- There is no guarantee that the range of services now available at the Hospital will move across to the Hub
The Local Plan is here (search for ‘hospital’):
6c51ee038c5a2ec1d736d333886c12a3_Dacorum_Local_Plan_to_2041
The recent Statement of Common Ground between NHS bosses and Dacorum Council is here:
Statement of Common Ground DBC and NHS