Whipps Cross Hospital

Barts Redevelopment

LBWF Whipps redevelopment

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On the 24th November 2021 LBWF's Planning Committee gave planning permission for the new hospital to be built where the old Nurse's home is being demolished. The Planning Officer's report was feeble as it just accpeted all the points Barts Health had made. At least 10 public speaker's were allowed their 3 minute speeches, most of them makiong the point that more land should be kept for future Health needs. But the Councillors (4 Labour and 1 Tory) ignored this and 3 didn't even speak so it was a pure rubber stamp on what Barts had submitted.

The GLA Stage 1 was more critical and whether the Officer's report has dealt with the GLA's concerns about not losing any of the existing services will be dealt with by their Stage 2 report and the Section 106 agreement.

Concern has been expressed about the lose of services as follows:

The massive disposal of NHS land that is predicated in the Planning Application will leave the NHS with no space for the replacement, on the Whipps site, of these existing centres provided by Barts NHS Trust and North East London Foundation Trust:

1.  Woodlands Day Centre – cares for patients with all varieties of haematological disorders.

2.  Connaught Day Hospital - comprehensive care for elderly patients – covering their medical, social and emotional needs.

3.   The Margaret Centre – a fully functioning Hospice

4.   NELFT's Woodbury Unit (which provides a service complementary to the acute medical services provided by Whipps Cross Hospital, mainly for frail, elderly people, but including others where appropriate), and  

5.    NELFT's Pine Lodge Unit (which provides the acute psychiatric liaison service to the hospital and is especially important to the Accident & Emergency Department and Urgent Care services).  

The services currently provided by the Woodbury Unit and Pine Lodge Unit are not identified in the published design plans, planning applications and health and care strategy documents of the Barts Health NHS Trust. 

All five services are integral to and/or supportive of  the clinical functioning of the present hospital. If there is no space for their inclusion, then the new hospital will not be a replacement hospital; it will provide a lesser breadth and depth of service, and will represent a reduction in service levels offered to the people of Waltham Forest, Redbridge, Newham and Epping contrary to the GLA policy S1.

In addition the Ambulance Depot is on its own site, but is in the curtilage of the NHS site, and if it wanted to expand it would make sense to use land adjacent to the current depot.

Selling off too much land would damage the chances of providing a good NHS service in the future by not allowing any wriggle room for future expansion. You need to put a restriction on this application that states “more land should be kept for Health Services use until the new hospital is up and running and the NHS and Community services have a better idea of how much land they really do need”.