Sutton Council welcomes plans to keep health services at St Helier AND build a new hospital in the borough

Sutton Council welcomes the news that Merton, Sutton and Surrey Clinical Commissioning Groups have submitted a business plan to NHS England that Epsom and St Helier University Hospitals NHS Trust retains the majority of its services at its current sites and build a new hospital in the borough for emergency cases and most at risk-patients. 

The proposals mean that Epsom Hospital and St Helier Hospital would continue to run the majority of services as they do now, covering 85% of patients, including drop-in urgent treatment centres, outpatients, day case surgery, antenatal and postnatal clinics, chemotherapy, dialysis, beds for people who are medically stable, endoscopy, imaging and diagnostics. For emergency cases and the most at-risk patients - 15% of the people who use the hospitals’ services - the proposal is to improve acute services by building a new first class modern hospital. This new facility would deliver the major elements of A&E, acute medicine, critical care, emergency surgery, hospital births and inpatient paediatrics. This could be located at one of the existing hospital sites in St Helier, Sutton or Epsom.

The Leader of Sutton Council, Cllr Ruth Dombey, said: 

 

“We are ambitious for Sutton and this announcement signals another significant milestone along the journey to improve the health and wellbeing of the residents in our borough. The London Cancer Hub, a partnership between the Council, the Royal Marsden and the Institute of Cancer Research will put Sutton on the world map for cancer treatment and research. I hope the submission from Epsom and St Helier University Hospitals NHS Trust will further improve services in the borough for all our hospital patients, including emergency cases and those most at-risk.”

Notes

 

Following the submission of the business plan, the next steps are feedback from the NHS’s national assurance process, and an agreement in principle that capital funding will be available. There would then be a public meeting to consider all of the evidence and decide on a preferred option. This would trigger a formal public consultation on all options.