The fate of St Helier hospital hangs in the balance this week and everyone who reads the Sutton Guardian can make a stand and play their part in saving it.

After months of uncertainty the local Better Services Better Value (BSBV) review of NHS services in SW London will shortly recommend which A&E and maternity units it wants to close.

On close examination decisions by BSBV can be shown to be based on a flawed process, contested assumptions and poor data.  Rather than winning converts to their proposals the more they explain them the more BSBV have turned political, clinical and public opinion against them.

Despite St Helier being the best performing hospital in SW London, today’s quality has been discounted in favour of a hope that the quality of the rest will improve in the future.

BSBV assumes that as many as six out of ten people who use A&E do not need to be there!  Even if that were true, and it is not, there are no credible costed plans to deliver the expansion in community health and GP services necessary to reverse the rising demand for A&E.

BSBV claim that their medicine is necessary to improve patient safety.  They want to have more consultants on hand, a good idea.  But rather than putting in hand the steps necessary to recruit them they want to embark on a £350 million building programme to expand the remaining hospitals.  They do not have any guarantees that this money will be available from the Treasury.

Rather than looking for the simplest, lowest cost way of delivering improved patient safety they are set on a disruptive, highly complex and risky enterprise.

Decisions about whether or not these grandiose and risky plans proceed will be taken by Sutton’s Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG).  The CCG is made up of local GPs, other clinicians and lay members. 

Every one of your readers who wants to protect A&E and maternity services at St Helier can help.  Write to your GP and tell them you want the plans dropped and a less risky and less expensive plan put in its place. Ask your GP to support St Helier’s A&E and maternity unit by joining with their patients to tell the CCG to go back to the drawing board.

Finally, attend the Sutton CCG meeting starting at 1pm on 9th May at St Bedes Conference Centre, St Raphael's Hospice, London Road, North Cheam.  This is not a public meeting it is a meeting held in public. But just by turning up and making a silent protest will demonstrate the strength of feeling.

Paul Burstow MP for Sutton, Cheam and Worcester Park
Tom Brake MP for Carshalton and Wallington
Councillor Ruth Dombey, Leader of Sutton Council