Update on our meeting with Merton CCG!

KOSHH campaigners had planned to meet with Merton CCG on 13 October. However, we have decided to postpone the meeting until after the Merton CCG has release its public response to the Epsom-St Helier Estates Review document.

Click here to read the document for yourself.

In September, we expressed concerns after the Merton CCG AGM. In particular, we are worried about the CCG's response to the Estates Review document as well as its inability to guarantee the future of any local hospitals. Click here to read about our concerns following the AGM.

At the AGM, it was encouraging that Merton CCG promised to release a public statement on the Estates Review in November. We believe it will be more constructive to meet with Merton CCG after they have made public their response to the Estates Review, a document KOSHH campaigners believe represents a threat to services at our local hospitals.

So, the ball is in Merton CCG's court. We await the November release of their response to the Estates Review. We also urge all CCGs that make decisions affecting Epsom and St Helier Hospitals to make public their response to this potentially game-changing document.

And, if need be, we will meet with all relevant CCGs to discuss the future of our hospitals in the wake of the Estates Review. South West London Collaborative Commissioning, over to you now...

KOSHH in the news! Featuring Tom Brake MP making curious statements...

KOSHH has made it to the front page of today's Sutton Guardian. It is always encouraging to get coverage in the media although we wish the future of our local health services was assured and we didn't have to keep waking people up to the real threats to St Helier Hospital, as well as other hospitals in south-west London and Sutton.

Click here for the link to the Sutton Guardian article.

It is curious that Tom Brake, Liberal Democrat MP for Carshalton and Wallington, is only now saying the £219m earmarked for St Helier Hospital's redevelopment is off the table. Has he been paying attention? This has been the case for quite some time now. Click here for a story on this from 2012 and click here for another story about the £219m from as far back as 2010.

The letter Brake received in August from Jeremy Hunt should surprise nobody.

Given that it is well known that local Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) have been tasked with making "efficiency savings", it should come as no surprise to anybody who is paying attention that this money is not likely to be forthcoming. While it would certainly be more responsible to spend money properly upgrading St Helier Hospital instead of building a whole new hospital on the old Sutton Hospital site, at the expense of Epsom and St Helier Hospitals, as per the "traingate" leak, it is now apparent that we won't see a massively overhauled St Helier Hospital any time soon.

Yesterday was the closing date for public comments on the Epsom-St Helier Trust Estates Review document via the trust's website*. This document mentions £500m worth of investment is required. This would still work out cheaper than building a whole new hospital, along with the necessary road and public transport upgrades, for a new hospital on the Sutton site. That is a ridiculous plan which would mean at least 400 less beds for the local area and a hospital in a less convenient location than Epsom or St Helier.

It is also curious that Tom Brake described George Osborne's response to his question in the House of Commons about the future of St Helier Hospital as an "almost cast-iron guarantee". Leaving aside the metallic mystery as to what "almost cast-iron" is, a quick read of Hansard reveals that George Osborne simply gave a typical politician's answer in which no specific commitment was made and in which he was very careful to not actually mention the £219m sum.

Why did Tom Brake not make a bigger fuss about George Osborne's completely unsatisfactory non-answer at the time?

St Helier Hospital remains in limbo, with smaller upgrades taking place, but no overall plan in place to improve the site overall.

Furthermore, given that Tom Brake voted for the Health and Social Care Act 2012, which led to the creation of CCGs in the first place, why does he never attend CCG meetings to ask hard questions of the decision-makers who are spending our money? It would also be nice to see Tom Brake at Epsom-St Helier Trust board meetings too.

The CCGs, as well as the Epsom-St Helier Trust, need to be held publicly accountable for the way our tax pounds are spent and for their plans for the future of our essential local health services.

It is not just Tom Brake who should be doing this but all local MPs, regardless of political affiliation, and all local councilllors, especially those who campaigned on a platform of saving St Helier Hospital.

As we reported earlier this week, Merton CCG Chief Officer, Adam Doyle, was not prepared to make any public commitment to any of our local hospitals at last Thursday night's AGM. There are six CCGs, as part of South West London Collaborative Commissioning, involved in making decisions about our local health services. The lack of commitment to preserving our hospitals by Merton CCG is, most likely, the tip of the iceberg.

This story is far from over.

* A more detailed blog post on the Epsom-St Helier Trust Estates Review is coming soon.







Photography by Piotr Siedlecki

Merton CCG AGM: KOSHH's concerns

We attended the Merton Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) Annual General Meeting last Thursday night and our concerns for the future of St Helier Hospital remain as strong as ever. The AGM organisers called for questions in advance. Despite this, the only questions submitted were from KOSHH.

Our first question was whether all members of Merton CCG have read the Epsom-St Helier Trust Estates Review document. As this is a possible blueprint for the future of both Epsom and St Helier hospital sites, we expect everyone involved with all relevant CCGs to have read it. This is not an unreasonable expectation.

Adam Doyle, the Chief Officer, confirmed that all members of the governing body have read the Estates Review but not all members of the CCG. This is disturbing to say the least. Why wouldn't all CCG members be compelled to familiarise themselves with a document that will have far-reaching implications on local health services?

We asked if anyone from Merton CCG could share their thoughts on the review but nobody on the panel was prepared to offer any comment.

We then asked if the CCG members see the Estates Review as a threat to the future of St Helier Hospital. Despite this being a yes-or-no question, no yes-or-no answer was forthcoming.

Most critically of all, we asked if Merton CCG is committed to the preservation of all services at St Helier Hospital. Again, this is a yes-or-no question but we started to get an answer that talked of challenges, issues and the need for repairs at St Helier Hospital but no definite response.

We asked for a yes-or-no answer and were told that the CCG could not commit to preserving the services at any hospital.

Our final question was to ask if Merton CCG was going to prepare a response to the Estates Review and whether it would be made public. Given that 30 September is the closing date for responses, this is also a pressing matter. Adam Doyle confirmed that Merton CCG would respond to the Estates Review and that their response will be made public in November.

It is hardly surprising that members of KOSHH did not leave the meeting feeling relaxed and comfortable about the future of vital services at St Helier Hospital. Given that the meeting repeatedly made the point that the area has a high birth rate and a growing population, it is shocking that Merton CCG is not prepared to make a strong and public commitment to preserving vital services at any of the local hospitals, including A&E and maternity.

KOSHH campaigners will be meeting with Merton CCG on 13 October and we will share the outcome of that meeting in the interests of full transparency and keeping the public informed on the threats to our local health services. We have been accused of scaremongering in the past but we maintain our position that the threat to St Helier Hospital's vital services remains and it has only been through the tireless campaigning of dedicated members of the community over many years that we still have this essential facility.

Merton CCG is not the only CCG responsible for making decisions that will affect the future of our local hospitals. KOSHH campaigners will also be holding the other CCGs that make up South West London Collaborative Commissioning to account.

Diary date! This Thursday! Merton CCG AGM!

The Merton Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) is one of the big decision-makers for healthcare services in South West London. Thanks to the Health and Social Care Act 2012, the CCGs are the groups that hold the pursestrings when it comes to the funding of our essential healthcare services.

Attending these meeting is one of the few ways that the people can engage with NHS decision-makers and ask questions.

The Merton CCG AGM is on this Thursday, it is open to the public and you can submit questions to ask of the governing body in advance of the meeting by emailing communications@mertonccg.nhs.uk - click here for more information.

To confirm your attendance, please email Tony Foote on tonyfoote@nhs.net

The vital info:

Merton CCG Annual General Meeting

Date: Thursday 24 September

Time: 6pm-8pm

Venue: Morden Assembly Hall, Tudor Drive, Morden, SM4 4PJ


Public transport directions: From Morden Tube Station, catch the 163, 293 or 413 from Bus Stop F. If you are on the 163 or 293, get off the bus at the eighth stop (Lower Morden/The Beverley). If you are on the 413, get off the bus at the 10th stop (Queen Mary Avenue).

From Raynes Park Station, catch the 163 towards Morden from Bus Stop S and get off at either Queen Mary Avenue (six stops) or Tudor Drive (seven stops).

From Sutton Town Centre, catch the 413 to Queen Mary Avenue (14 stops from Times Square, Stop J).

From Epsom Town Centre, catch the 293 bus from Stop C or Stop G (Epsom High Street) and get off at the Tudor Drive stop (22-23 stops).

Healthwatch Sutton diary date, for those who can make it...

Healthwatch Sutton is holding a semi-public meeting about the Epsom-St Helier Hospital Estates Review. We say "semi-public" because people who want to attend cannot simply turn up on the day. Instead, they must RSVP in advance.

We are not sure how many people will be able to attend this meeting as it is scheduled for Tuesday, 22 September, from 2pm until 4pm. This makes it pretty much impossible for anyone with a day job to attend or people with childcare commitments. As such, Healthwatch Sutton surely cannot expect a representative cross-section of the community to attend?

On Twitter, we have asked Healthwatch Sutton if they would consider changing the timing of this meeting. If we receive a response, we will update this blog accordingly.

The Estates Review is important as it could well set our local hospitals on a path of downgrading or closure. Click here to read more about our concerns.

For those who are free from 2pm-4pm on 22 November, you will need to email sara@suttoncvs.org.uk or call call 020 8641 9540 to reserve your place.

We have struggled to get Clinical Commissioning Groups to hold meetings at sensible times. Now it seems that Healthwatch Sutton is following suit.

Could it be that Healthwatch Sutton is afraid of audience members asking challenging questions? KOSHH campaigners were involved in a farcical situation in July last year when a Healthwatch meeting about local health services descended into chaos and was called to an end half an hour before the advertised end time. The meeting organisers tried to enforce a situation where they would only take pre-approved questions in advance.

After the pre-approved and largely uncontroversial questions were answered, there was plenty of time left so the chair reluctantly agreed to questions from the floor. The meeting was called to an abrupt halt after Dr Phillip Howard embarrassed the panel with statistics about the trust's excellent A&E performance.

On top of this, it was a very Liberal Democrat-heavy panel and RSVPs and questions-in-advance had to be sent through the office of Tom Brake, Liberal Democrat MP for Carshalton and Wallington. Healthwatch Sutton is meant to be non-political. We complained to the Charities Commission about this but, absurdly, got a response saying there was no problem with the event being administered this way. Nobody from the Charities Commission bothered to get in touch with KOSHH for more information.

In short, we are frustrated that not only are we having to beg CCGs to hold meetings in the evening so more people can attend but now Healthwatch Sutton is following suit.

If you can attend the Healthwatch Sutton meeting on 22 September, please feel free to comment at the end of this blog post about what happened.




Image by Linnaea Mallette

Update on personal health budgets in South-West London/Surrey

We received an excellent response to our blog post on personal health budgets, the poor media reporting of these budgets and what they may mean for health services in our area. Thank you to everyone who took the time to read the blog post and share it.

We have now put in freedom of information requests with all six Clinical Commissioning Groups responsible for our end of South-West London/Surrey.

These are the questions they have been asked:

1. How many patients in the CCGs which come under SWLCC's administration are on personal healthcare budgets?

2. What is the average amount spent per patient on these budgets?

3. Can you provide a demographic breakdown of who uses these budgets?

4. Without naming patients, is there information available on what sort of treatments these budgets are funding?

5. What happens to a patient if their personal budget runs out and their health has not improved?

The six CCGs have 20 working days to respond to the FOI request. As such, we will report back on September 29 on any responses we have received.

Summer houses on the NHS? Cutting through the news reports with questions for our CCGs!

Sky News led its bulletin this morning with attention-grabbing headlines about summer houses, holidays and sat-navs being funded by the NHS. Sky News didn't actually research the story themselves - that was done by Pulse magazine, which investigated how personal healthcare budgets are spent. Plenty of other media outlets have also run this story including the BBC, the Mirror,

At least the Guardian, the Telegraph and the Independent mentioned that it is Clinical Commissioning Groups - or CCGs - that are allocating the money courtesy of the personal healthcare budgets. That would be the CCGs created under the Health and Social Care Act 2012. But you'd sooner find a report about the colonisation of the moon by unicorns wearing saddles made of cheese than ever see a news report mention this act, which was passed in the last parliament by the Conservative and Liberal Democrat MPs.

Of course, the truth is rather more complicated than any of these reports imply. Credit where credit is due though - the Daily Mail, while not accepting comments on the article online, had the insight to run a decent Press Association report. This report featured an interview with a professor who pointed out that while personal healthcare budgets may seem attractive on the surface, they do reflect an ideology that is "consumerist and individualistic" and not evidence-based.

But the way this story has been largely reported serves insidious dual purposes.

1. It demonises patients in the same way that stories about misuse of A&E departments and GPs demonise patients. While misuse of A&E and GP services creates problems, it makes for cheap headlines that ignore the bigger funding issues. It is easier to mock the person who rocked up to A&E with dog poo on their shoe than get properly angry about things like the cost to the taxpayer of rotten PFI deals and administering the NHS marketplace, both of which squander billions of pounds each year.

While personal healthcare budgets are not compulsory, can we be sure that patients, especially vulnerable and elderly patients, are not pressured into joining this scheme? It has echoes of Jeremy Hunt's plan to put the price of medications on the packaging so we know how much we are costing the NHS every time we take a pill that we need to get better. This plays into the "mustn't be a burden" mentality, the fear of wasting NHS time, even if someone is in genuine need of care.

If these budgets are targeting the vulnerable, it becomes questionable as to whether they really meet the goal of helping people take responsibility for their health and wellbeing.

2. It is more NHS-bashing by the media, feeding into the public appetite for cuts. By highlighting summer houses, holidays and sat-navs, it makes people angry about profligate NHS spending and removes any subtlety from the discussion. A holistic approach to healthcare is important - and defenders of personal healthcare budgets will use this argument - but holistic treatments need to be evidence-based, especially when they are publicly funded.

Are personal healthcare budgets a sneaky way to funnel more money to the private sector right under our noses? Will patients be encouraged to use their budgets to fund private health insurance?

The Pulse report does not mention our local CCGs, which fall under the umbrella of South West London Collaborative Commissioning. But in the interests of full transparency, we have some questions for them about how they use personal healthcare budgets. As we are still fighting to keep essential services, such as A&E and maternity as well as entire hospitals open, these questions need to be answered.

If a representative from SWLCC could respond to the following questions in the comments section of this blog post, that would be much appreciated:

1. How many patients in the CCGs which come under SWLCC's administration are on personal healthcare budgets?

2. What is the average amount spent per patient on these budgets?

3. Can you provide a demographic breakdown of who uses these budgets?

4. Without naming patients, is there information available on what sort of treatments these budgets are funding?

5. What happens to a patient if their personal budget runs out and their health has not improved?

CCGs (or why campaigning to save the local hospitals is so hard...)

Campaigning to save your local health services often feels like being at the foot of a mountain. You start to climb, you feel like you've made some progress, and then someone at the top of the mountain drops a giant bucket of mud down the slope and you're pushed back where you started from. And you're covered in mud so you might feel a bit demoralised as well.

Additionally, it can be hard to know where to direct your complaints, demands and questions about threats to your local health services. And, even if you do know, it can be hard to then mobilise people en masse to join the fight.

It is all well and good to be angry at the government and the Health Secretary. But we also need to be aware of how NHS England now works as a result of the Health and Social Care Act 2012, which was voted in by the Conservative and Liberal-Democrat MPs in the last parliament.

This act created the Clinical Commissioning Groups - the CCGs.

CCGs operated in every region of the country. They make the big decisions. They hold the pursestrings. They have been allocated budgets and it is they who make the decisions about what health services the NHS will fund in your local area.

When you see the phrase "postcode lottery" bandied about in the mainstream media about patients being denied treatment or patients receiving treatment that may be perceived as a poor use of public money, it is the CCGs that are making these decisions.

The postcode lottery situations we see today are a result of the Health and Social Care Act 2012.

Therefore, it is somewhat curious that when the media reports on postcode lottery NHS stories that this pernicious act of parliament is never mentioned. This week, the Daily Mail screamed at us about "Doughnuts and pizzas on the NHS"! This is the sort of journalism that relies on short attention spans and people not properly reading articles. This report, about patients with coeliac disease receiving gluten-free food on prescription, mentions how the system works but only in passing with a "NHS rules for prescribing food vary area by area" and the occasional "some NHS trusts" thrown in for good measure.

No mention of the role of CCGs in all this. That'd be the CCGs created by a government the Daily Mail supported then and, in its Tory outright majority form, supports now.

And it's not just the Daily Mail offering poor information on this story. Carole Malone writes a context-free opinion piece for the Mirror that seems to imply that the NHS has degenerated into a profligate cake shop for all. And the Daily Express fumes in a similar manner with no mention at all of how gluten-free food on prescription varies from region to region.

It also comes as no surprise that the Daily Telegraph, a long-time cheerleader for the Conservative Party, did not mention regional variations, CCGs or the Health and Social Care Act.

The Independent offers an opinion piece from a coeliac patient which at least calls out the reporting as "alarmist" but there is still no mention of CCGs or the Health and Social Care Act.

The BBC this morning, to its credit, did indeed mention CCGs when reporting on this story on the breakfast programme. But if you didn't happen to be tuned in to BBC1 at around 8.30am today, you probably missed the lesser-spotted CCG mention.

So what on Earth does all this have to do with saving Epsom and St Helier Hospitals?

Quite a lot, actually. The media hysteria over gluten-free food on prescription, while certainly a topic worthy of discussion, has become part of the NHS-bashing narrative of the mainstream media. As long as there is a drive to denigrate the NHS at every opportunity by a compliant media, the CCGs, and indeed the whole system that has created them in Westminster, will go unchallenged.

The mainstream media cannot be bothered to remind the public about how the NHS is now structured with CCGs or how that happened when they report on such stories, even though this is 100% relevant.

And here, in our end of South-West London/Surrey, we have been challenging the local CCGs, which are grouped under the umbrella of South West London Collaborative Commissioning, about their plans for Epsom and St Helier Hospitals as well as their declarations of interest.

If only the media would join us in this endeavour.






Photography by Maliz Ong

KOSHH speaks out on CCG staff taking lavish trips

The Epsom Guardian today reported that staff from Surrey Downs CCG and North West Surrey CCG went on a luxury spa trip to Germany funded by a pharmaceutical company.

Click here to read the story online.

We were asked to comment and, in short, we smell a rat. Why would it be necessary to go to a luxury spa in Germany to discuss a constipation drug? We understand that the NHS needs to buy drugs from pharmaceutical companies. It would be impractical for the NHS to start manufacturing every single drug it requires, obviously. But we do not understand why Clinical Commissioning Group staff would accept lavish hospitality from these companies?

The CCG system is problematic. It is undemocratic. It is clearly part of a larger agenda to privatise the NHS. There are members of CCGs with vested interests in healthcare. How can anyone who stands to win an NHS contract be in a position to commission such contracts?

Now we have supposedly independent commissioners taking luxurious trips at the expense of pharmaceutical companies. How is this OK?

The Surrey Downs CCG Director of Commissioning and Strategy, James Blythe, defended the trip. He said that Cosmocol, the constipation drug discussed on the trip, had already been commissioned before the trip took place.

But Cosmocol is not the only drug in Stirling Anglian Pharmaceuticals' range. Click here to see what else they have on offer. They also sell an osteoporosis drug. And who's to say the company won't add more products in the future?

Surrey Healthwatch communications officer, Lauren Ter Kuile, said that nobody has been in touch to suggest there was anything untoward about this trip.

Lauren, now we know about this and we thank Chris Longhurst from the Epsom Guardian for informing us, we are indeed suggesting that there is plenty that is untoward about this trip.

Will this lead to a change in policy? Are more CCG members taking trips at the expense of private companies? The public deserves to know and deserves better.

KOSHH campaigner in the news!

It has never been easier to write to your local newspaper in this era of email. And with newspapers now online, the reach of newspapers goes beyond the traditional audience of people who actually buy newspapers or have them delivered. We urge everyone to be heard via the letters pages of our newspapers - it does not take long to send an email.

KOSHH campaigner, Philippa Maslin, features at the top of the letters page in today's Sutton Guardian. She expresses perfectly our frustrations with our MPs and the conflicting messages thet are sending out over the future of Epsom and St Helier Hospitals.

KOSHH raises awareness at the Morden Family Fun Day

Dave Ash, Philippa Maslin and Colin Crilly spread the word about the threat to our hospital.

KOSHH campaigner Philippa Maslin writes about our presence on the weekend at the Morden Family Fun Day, an annual event held in Morden Park.

Sunday 19 July 2015 was the Morden Family Fun Day and KOSHH were extremely pleased to be a part of it. Thank you very much to Andy Butcher for his help in making this happen.

The KOSHH stall drew a lot of attention throughout the day, with many people interested to know the latest news regarding the hospital, and to sign a petition addressed to South West London Collaborative Commissioning (SWLCC). This petition asks that SWLCC protects, maintains and improves not only St Helier Hospital, but also Epsom Hospital, St George’s Hospital, Kingston Hospital and Croydon Hospital. 

In addition, quite a few people donated £1 in exchange for a lovely KOSHH badge, and ‘a regular’ at St Helier Hospital bought one of our equally lovely T-shirts.

People who were born at the hospital, people whose children were born at the hospital, people who have attended A&E, people whose life was saved by hospital staff, and people who are regular patients – we met them all and, by gosh, did some of them have some moving stories to tell. It was clear that the local community’s high regard for and loyalty to the hospital remains undiminished, and that ongoing threats to the hospital are perceived as deeply unjust.

It was particularly notable that a number of visitors to the stall recalled a BBC London news report, from April, which unearthed a secret plan to replace St Helier Hospital and Epsom Hospital with a new medical centre in Sutton – a centre which would not be built until at least 2020, but which would have just 800 beds, as opposed to the current 1,200 beds. 

What was especially striking was that no one seemed to be aware of the Estates Review being conducted by the Trust, or that the Review’s recommendation that £500m needs to be spent on rebuilding St Helier Hospital and St Epsom Hospital stands in direct contradiction to the massive ‘efficiency savings’ that both the Trust and SWLCC say that they are being asked to make. 

Visitors to the stall were completely shocked by this latest development, with several saying that it was bad enough when the £219m that was promised to St Helier Hospital was suddenly returned to the Treasury.

Of course, the uncertain future of St Helier Hospital is part of a wider picture of NHS cuts, closures and privatisation, and KOSHH exists to fight for the whole NHS, as well as our local hospital. It was, therefore, heartening to hear from the Mayor of Merton, David Chung, that he was going to try to help us arrange a screening of an extremely important and powerful documentary about the horrific destruction of the NHS, Sell-Off: The Abolition of Your NHS (2014), in Merton Civic Centre. His support is most welcome and we look forward to working with him. 

KOSHH would like to thank absolutely everybody who took the time to visit the stall. We really enjoyed meeting you all!

Dates for the diary! Screenings of Sell-Off

Sell-Off is an important independent documentary about what is really happening to our NHS. It helps explain why St Helier Hospital - as well as many other hospitals across the country - are currently under threat of closure or downgrading.

KOSHH has held several successful public screenings of Sell-Off and now there are two more coming up this month.

Diaries at the ready! Here are the dates!

Thursday 23 July, 1.30pm: There will be a screening of Sell-Off for the Merton Centre for Independent Living. 328 London Road, Mitcham. CR4 3FA

Wednesday 29 July, 7.30pm: There will be a screening of Sell-Off in the function room of the Morden Brook pub. Lower Morden Lane, Morden. SM4 4SS. There will be a Q&A session after the screening and, naturally, the bar will be open! The pub is located at the roundabout that intersects with Grand Drive - the one known locally as the Beverley Roundabout.

We'd love to see you at either of these screenings. It is a powerful film and everyone needs to see it.

What are we celebrating on #NHS67?

Today the NHS turns 67. It should be a proud day of celebration. We should be able to go about our business today relaxed in the knowledge that the NHS is properly funded, properly managed and always there for us when we need it. But we are living in curious times where, across the nation, campaigners are fighting for local services.

This is not how is should be on such an auspicious day.

We should not have to organise meetings in our communities to work out how we can keep our vital services, such as A&E and maternity, open.

We should not have to make Freedom of Information requests to find out from CCGs and hospital trusts how are money is being spent.

We should not see a penny of our money going to private consultancy firms, such as Deloittes, most of whom have clients with NHS contracts.

We should not be fobbed off when we ask questions about the impact of private contractors on our health services, such as private cleaning contractors and infection rates.

We should not have to remind people over and over again that the Health and Social Care Act 2012 is destroying our NHS and that all MPs who voted for it need to be held to account.

We should not have to beg and plead with the major political parties to come up with policies for our NHS that does not involve moving to a US-style, insurance-based system.

We should not have to march on the streets to demand that big corporations, such as Google, Boots, Virgin and Amazon, pay their fair share of taxes on profits made in the UK so that the NHS can be properly funded.

We should not have to struggle to tell people that PFI deals and the massive cost of the internal marketplace are putting huge cost pressures on the NHS.

We should not have to remind people that while there may indeed be an argument for charging people for the NHS if they are not entitled to use it, that money will only cover 0.06% of the total budget, despite disproportionate media reports about "health tourism".

We should not have to read and watch endless NHS-bashing reports in the media that offer no balance and only serve to whet the public appetite for hospital closures.

We should not have a situation where too many good people are leaving the NHS because the conditions are becoming intolerable.

We should not have our hospitals relying heavily on agency staff instead of employing permanent staff.

We should not have to beg and plead with CCGs to hold meetings at times that are convenient for more people and to properly publicise their meeting times.

We should not have to constantly explain to people what CCGs are and how they hold the pursestrings for major decisions about our hospitals.

We should not have to hear about cuts being euphemistically described as "efficiency savings".

We should not feel so powerless nor feel like the closure of our local hospitals is inevitable.

We should not have to do any of these things. And yet we do. Because if we don't, we won't have our local hospital and we won't have an NHS either.




Photography by Alex Grichenko

The £219m promise for St Helier Hospital...

It was an intriguing exchange in the House of Commons when George Osborne filled in for David Cameron at Prime Minister's Question Time and Tom Brake asked him about funding for much-needed upgrades to St Helier Hospital.

Here is the exchange from Hansard:

Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD): The Chancellor will be aware that under the coalition, £219 million was allocated to rebuilding St Helier hospital. Will he restate the commitment to that funding so that we can save St Helier?

Mr Osborne: We did commit to that hospital project, and provided that it continues to represent value for money, which I am pretty clear that it does, we will go on providing that support. What we have done is to commit to the Simon Stevens plan for the national health service—an additional £8 billion of NHS spending —which is something we can only do if we have our public finances in better order and we are growing our economy, which is precisely what we are doing.

In response to George Osborne's rather mealy-mouthed answer, Tom Brake put out the following press release:

Chancellor George Osborne promised that the new government would allocate £219 million to save St. Helier Hospital. He was challenged directly by Tom Brake, MP for Carshalton and Wallington, during Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday. 

Mr. Osborne pledged to provide funding for St. Helier as long as the hospital “continues to represent value for money.” He said he thinks the hospital is performing well now.

Tom has led a campaign to save St. Helier hospital from harmful budget cuts for years. More than 21,000 local residents have signed his online petition to save the hospital, which can be found at http://www.saveoursthelier.co.uk/save_our_st_helier_petition.

Tom commented,

“I am pleased that Mr. Osborne has promised to stick with the coalition government’s plan to allocate £219 million to St. Helier Hospital. I intend to hold him to his promise. Our community deserves convenient access to essential healthcare services from a quality hospital like St. Helier. Osborne and the Conservative government must now deliver it.”

Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD): The Chancellor will be aware that under the coalition, £219 million was allocated to rebuilding St Helier hospital. Will he restate the commitment to that funding so that we can save St Helier?

Mr Osborne: We did commit to that hospital project, and provided that it continues to represent value for money, which I am pretty clear that it does, we will go on providing that support. What we have done is to commit to the Simon Stevens plan for the national health service—an additional £8 billion of NHS spending —which is something we can only do if we have our public finances in better order and we are growing our economy, which is precisely what we are doing.

Hang on a moment, Tom. Where exactly in George Osborne's response does he actually say the £219m is back on the table? He doesn't. He gives a slippery politician's answer.

Tom, a few things...

1. The £219m was taken off the table in February 2014, as we are sure you are aware.

2. How does this claim that the £219m is promised for St Helier Hospital square up with the £360m in "efficiency savings" that the CCGs are making? The numbers simply do not add up.

3. The CCGs hold the pursestrings here and both you and Mr Osborne voted for the Health and Social Care Act 2012, the very act that created the CCGs. So why are neither of you mentioning the CCGs?

4. Are you putting pressure on the CCGs to rethink the need for the £360m in "efficiency savings"?

5. Given that the Health and Social Care Act 2012 takes responsibility for the NHS away from the Secretary of State for Health and places it in the hands of the CCGs, does George Osborne or Jeremy Hunt have the authority to make promises about funding for individual hospitals?

6. Why are you still linking to your e-petition about St Helier Hospital when it is still addressed to the wrong body, pre-dates the election and nobody seems to know when it will be handed in?

We eagerly await your response, Mr Brake.

A victory with the CCGs!

We have achieved a victory this week with the local Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs)! The six CCGs which make the big decisions for Epsom and St Helier's health services are grouped together as South West London Collaborative Commissioning (SWLCC).

For a long time, we have asked that the meetings of all six CCGs, which are open to the public, be better advertised. The SWLCC website did not make it easy to find out when the meeting times are for the CCGs and the individual websites for each CCG were not much better. But after much agitation of the SWLCC Twitter account, we are pleased to report that the SWLCC website home page now has direct links to meeting times for all six CCGs.

All you have to do now to find out when the meetings are on is click here and scroll down.

We thank SWLCC for making this small but important change to the website.

It is so important that information about meeting times is easy to find and that people are aware of the role of CCGs in our health system.

Our next request is for at least half the meetings of the CCGs be held in the evenings to allow more people to attend. At present, meetings are generally held in office hours which makes it impossible for many working people to attend. If the CCGs could look at addressing this issue in the interests of transparency, that would be much appreciated.

Additionally, we have been disappointed but not entirely surprised that local MPs have not been vocal on issues of transparency with CCGs. We urge all MPs to attend CCG meetings whenever possible, or to send representatives to ask questions on their behalf when they cannot make it because of other commitments. This is where the big decisions are being made about Epsom and St Helier Hospitals so it is vital they are well informed and challenge CCGs on how our money is spent.



Image by Piotr Siedlecki

Welcome to the official online home of the KOSHH campaign

It has been a long time coming but at last it is here - the official blog of the Keep Our St Helier Hospital (KOSHH) campaign - the campaign to keep St Helier Hospital open with all its services intact. We also recognise the importance of keeping Epsom Hospital open. Our end of London and Surrey needs both hospitals to be run properly, funded properly and for both sites to receive much-needed upgrades to meet the needs of our communities in the 21st Century and beyond.

Our local hospitals are under threat again

We have fought many battles over the past few years and we thought we might get some rest when the Better Services, Better Values programme - which threatened services such as A&E, maternity and renal - was kicked into the long grass. How wrong we were. Just before the election, the now-infamous "traingate" leak happened - the BBC broke the story of consultants overheard on a train to Waterloo discussing plans to close Epsom and St Helier Hospitals and open a so-called "super hospital" at the site of the old Sutton Hospital. That would be the Sutton Hospital that has been gradually closing down in recent years.

But apart from ripping away two hospitals, strategically located to serve people in our area, the "super hospital" would not be so super at all. According to the leak, it would have 800 beds - a reduction in the number of beds for the area. We have no details on exactly what services would be on offer, whether these services would be publicly run or farmed out to private companies, how much this would all cost, how much has been spent on private consultancy firms already, and whether any costings have even begun to factor in things like the massive road and public transport upgrades that would be required for the Sutton proposal to become a reality.

We need to lobby the CCGs. But what are CCGs?

We met with the Epsom-St Helier Trust CEO, Daniel Elkeles, a few months ago in good faith. At no point was the Sutton proposal mentioned. We find it very hard to believe he wouldn't have known anything about it when we met with him. This is very disappointing indeed.

But it is the Clinical Commissioning Groups - known as CCGs - that hold the pursestrings. Ever since the Health and Social Care Act 2012 was passed at Westminster, these groups, made up of clinicians, are the ones making the big decisions about how our money is spent and how our health services are provided. These groups need to be lobbied hard and held accountable.

Neither our MPs, local councillors, the Health Secretary or Daniel Elkeles are in a position to guarantee the security of our services. This is why we urge MPs and local councillors to attend CCG meetings whenever they can, as well as members of the public.

Of course, finding the times of CCG meetings is difficult and this is something else that needs to be changed. What we do know is they are almost always held during office hours, which makes it hard for many people to attend. This also needs to change.

What do we want?

In light of the leak about a possible hospital on the Sutton site at the expense of Epsom and St Helier Hospitals, we need to know whether Sutton Council can dispose of this land for other purposes, such as education or affordable housing. This is urgent.

We are calling for proper investment in both Epsom and St Helier Hospitals so they can continue to provide the vital services we all depend on. Cutting vital services such as A&E, maternity, renal and the children's hospital will impact on us all and overburden St Georges Hospital in Tooting, a hospital that, like Epsom and St Helier, is doing great work but in very trying circumstances.

We want our money to be spent wisely. We are deeply concerned about the impact of outsourcing services, such as facilities management and non-emergency ambulances, to the private sector. The increased use of agency nurses - which costs a fortune - instead of properly employing nurses on a permanent basis is another serious issue that needs to be addressed.

We do not want our money wasted on yet another consultancy that is a re-run of Better Services, Better Value - only this time, entire hospital closures are the real risk.

The road ahead

We have a lot to do. We have a big fight ahead of us. This blog will be a place where you can find out more about the KOSHH campaign, ways you can help fight to keep our hospitals open and upcoming events. Feel free to comment at the end of the blog posts. We welcome open discussion.

KOSHH has members from a range of backgrounds, we are not a political party and we are not a front for any other political party.

Feel free to share this blog with family and friends. All posts are open to the public for comments. Constructive comments and debate are welcome.