The Front Page - Copy 43( Gwyn Prosser on the Hospital situation.)
7 November 2009
The 30 year struggle to save Buckland
When I moved to Dover 30 years ago, Buckland was a fully functioning General Hospital and the Victoria Hospital in Deal was a struggling Cottage Hospital but both were well used and highly valued by their communities. I’ve got a particular attachment to Buckland because my son was born there, me wife nursed there and I was an inpatient there many years ago.
Over the years, the Victoria has been expanded and improved but successive hospital authorities have removed services from Buckland as the QEQM, William Harvey and Canterbury hospitals have taken over as the strategic acute units for East Kent.
Along with my colleagues in the Labour Party and thousands of local people I campaigned vigorously to stop the rot at Buckland and I worked with the Hospital Trust to find ways of importing new services to keep the hospital viable.
Our campaigning – including the mass petitions, the meetings with the hospital bosses and the marches and rallies in Dover brought about a temporary stop to the haemorrhaging of services and the promise of a £4 million refurbishment programme – but the Trust Board had a change of view and promises to invest and to retain services were broken.
We continued to campaign but, after the Trust conducted a structural survey of Buckland and declared the building unfit for purpose, the writing was on the wall and new options were considered.
The good news was that the Trust were persuaded to commit £20 million funding to build a new Community Hospital for Dover and after a rather convoluted and flawed consultation process the mid-town Maison Dieu option emerged as the preferred site.
Since that time a lot of work has been done in an effort to assess the flood risk of the site and find workable remedies to contain the River Dour and deal with surface water flooding. The Environment Agency maintain that whatever amelioration measures are taken there will still be, what they call, ‘a residual flood risk’
Nearly all of London is built in a residual flood risk area but it’s quite understandable that the Agency are taking a precautionary stance over the mid town site.
Faced with these uncertainties the Hospital Trust is now considering what other sites might be suitable as a fall-back option if the mid town site can’t be progressed within the time scale. The options are a new build on Buckland Hospital car park, the Buckland Mill development, the old Royal Mail site at Charlton Green and Whitfield.
I still support the favoured option which has been supported by both the Health Trusts, the County Council, the District Council and many – but not all – of the stakeholders, namely, the mid-town location.
I accept that we must take note of the Environment Agency’s reservations about the flooding risk and I agree that it’s prudent of the Hospital Trust to start considering other possible options so as to have a fall back plan. Based on the information currently available, I am minded to take the advice of DDC’s technical officers who tell me that an acceptable solution can be engineered on the mid-town site and this can be done within the timescale and without jeopardising the funding. Dover District Council’s Conservative Leadership and the Labour Group state this to be their shared view at present.
Whatever else happens, we mustn’t jeopardise the funding commitment but the Trust’s recent confirmation that the £20 million is safe for another two years gives credence to the view that further flood studies should be explored on the Maison Dieu site. However, when I attended the Community Hospital meeting on 19th October the Environment Agency presented us with a very gloomy flood assessment for the mid town site and pointed out some lesser flood risks at the alternative locations.
It now looks likely that the mid-town site will be eliminated by failure to produce an acceptable flood avoidance plan within the time scale and should this be the case an alternative site will need to be selected as quickly as possible.
The imperative driving this decision will then be:
“Which site most closely meets all the declared criteria and which location will allow the earliest start at an affordable cost?”
Given that the Hospital Trust already owns the Buckland site it looks likely that the Board will now consider the mid town site to be too risky and settle for safest option which is Buckland Hospital.
There have been lots of broken promises and false dawns over the last 30 years and this unhappy background makes it incumbent on the current Trusts to hold to their funding commitment and provide Dover with the sort of community hospital it deserves on a site that is accessible to those in most need, deliverable, future proof and safe from being flooded out.
If that does turn out to be Buckland perhaps we will be able to look back on all those years of fighting for our hospital and say: “We did save Buckland after all”
Gwyn Prosser MP on the Hospital Situation....
DOVER’S NEW COMMUNITY HOSPITAL
The 30 year struggle to save Buckland
When I moved to Dover 30 years ago, Buckland was a fully functioning General Hospital and the Victoria Hospital in Deal was a struggling Cottage Hospital but both were well used and highly valued by their communities. I’ve got a particular attachment to Buckland because my son was born there, me wife nursed there and I was an inpatient there many years ago.
Over the years, the Victoria has been expanded and improved but successive hospital authorities have removed services from Buckland as the QEQM, William Harvey and Canterbury hospitals have taken over as the strategic acute units for East Kent.
Along with my colleagues in the Labour Party and thousands of local people I campaigned vigorously to stop the rot at Buckland and I worked with the Hospital Trust to find ways of importing new services to keep the hospital viable.
Our campaigning – including the mass petitions, the meetings with the hospital bosses and the marches and rallies in Dover brought about a temporary stop to the haemorrhaging of services and the promise of a £4 million refurbishment programme – but the Trust Board had a change of view and promises to invest and to retain services were broken.
We continued to campaign but, after the Trust conducted a structural survey of Buckland and declared the building unfit for purpose, the writing was on the wall and new options were considered.
The good news was that the Trust were persuaded to commit £20 million funding to build a new Community Hospital for Dover and after a rather convoluted and flawed consultation process the mid-town Maison Dieu option emerged as the preferred site.
Since that time a lot of work has been done in an effort to assess the flood risk of the site and find workable remedies to contain the River Dour and deal with surface water flooding. The Environment Agency maintain that whatever amelioration measures are taken there will still be, what they call, ‘a residual flood risk’
Nearly all of London is built in a residual flood risk area but it’s quite understandable that the Agency are taking a precautionary stance over the mid town site.
Faced with these uncertainties the Hospital Trust is now considering what other sites might be suitable as a fall-back option if the mid town site can’t be progressed within the time scale. The options are a new build on Buckland Hospital car park, the Buckland Mill development, the old Royal Mail site at Charlton Green and Whitfield.
I still support the favoured option which has been supported by both the Health Trusts, the County Council, the District Council and many – but not all – of the stakeholders, namely, the mid-town location.
I accept that we must take note of the Environment Agency’s reservations about the flooding risk and I agree that it’s prudent of the Hospital Trust to start considering other possible options so as to have a fall back plan. Based on the information currently available, I am minded to take the advice of DDC’s technical officers who tell me that an acceptable solution can be engineered on the mid-town site and this can be done within the timescale and without jeopardising the funding. Dover District Council’s Conservative Leadership and the Labour Group state this to be their shared view at present.
Whatever else happens, we mustn’t jeopardise the funding commitment but the Trust’s recent confirmation that the £20 million is safe for another two years gives credence to the view that further flood studies should be explored on the Maison Dieu site. However, when I attended the Community Hospital meeting on 19th October the Environment Agency presented us with a very gloomy flood assessment for the mid town site and pointed out some lesser flood risks at the alternative locations.
It now looks likely that the mid-town site will be eliminated by failure to produce an acceptable flood avoidance plan within the time scale and should this be the case an alternative site will need to be selected as quickly as possible.
The imperative driving this decision will then be:
“Which site most closely meets all the declared criteria and which location will allow the earliest start at an affordable cost?”
Given that the Hospital Trust already owns the Buckland site it looks likely that the Board will now consider the mid town site to be too risky and settle for safest option which is Buckland Hospital.
There have been lots of broken promises and false dawns over the last 30 years and this unhappy background makes it incumbent on the current Trusts to hold to their funding commitment and provide Dover with the sort of community hospital it deserves on a site that is accessible to those in most need, deliverable, future proof and safe from being flooded out.
If that does turn out to be Buckland perhaps we will be able to look back on all those years of fighting for our hospital and say: “We did save Buckland after all”