The fight to save St Helier Hospital continues

Mitcham & Morden

The Tory Government has just given the go ahead to closing the Accident and Emergency Department, the Maternity Unit and to stop all in-patient operation at St. Helier Hospital. Their plan is to move them to the not-yet-built Belmont Hospital, one of these mythical ‘40 new’ hospitals that Boris Johnson used to talk about.

If Belmont ever were to be built, it is nigh on impossible to get to without a car: two buses, over an hour and then still a ten-minute walk. And forget getting on a train or tube as part of your journey.

Moving services to Belmont from St. Helier would also throw St. George’s into crisis. It’s obvious that more local residents would opt to go there rather than to Belmont. St. George’s is already teetering, extra patients from St. Helier could push it over the edge.

This is why Merton’s Labour Council has set up its own independent assessment to look at the real impact closing services at St. Helier would have on local people, and what would be consequent problems elsewhere, something the government has refused to do as part of their decision-making. Belmont is a much healthier and wealthier area than that around St. Helier. There are more than twice as many people with bad or very bad health within a mile of St. Helier than within a mile of Belmont.

We are really angry that the Tory Government has allowed St. Helier to fall in to such a state of disrepair, with reports of flooding in the basement and holes in the ceiling. We want St. Helier to be rebuilt on its current site, serving the area where residents have the biggest health problems, the lowest life expectancy and most low weight babies and we are going to continue to fight this closure of services for local residents.