Meeting Over Scrapped Hospital Plans

30 March 2010, 06:00

The MP for St Albans, Anne Main is holding a meeting tonight, to discuss the recent decision to scrap the planned Urgent Care Centre at St Albans City Hospital.

Anne will chair the meeting, and has invited representatives of local political parties from across the political spectrum, as well as senior NHS managers, to attend.

It comes after health bosses confirmed that their plans to upgrade St Albans City Hospital to an Urgent Care Centre were scrapped because of claims it would be too expensive.

Just before the meeting Anne Main has been telling Heart:

"I felt it was vital before we go into a General Election purdah period that representatives of the Primary Care Trust came along to the meeting to discuss with the public this fundamental shift in provision for St Albans residents.

"I am obviously very upset at the apparent direction local health service provision is taking, and this is why I felt it was so important to call this meeting, as an opportunity to air this matter in a public forum so that we can get some answers."

"There's a lot of anger locally that all the promises over the years St Albans have been made have actually left us in a really poor way. We've had lots of consultations, people want a reasonable level of local services. We don’t expect a super hospital, we don’t expect a fully fledged A&E. We do expect what we were promised, which was an Urgency Centre. And I don’t think, given the amount of houses being built in and around St Albans that is unreasonable. And it seems to be it’s only because the budgets have been so spent elsewhere, that St Albans is getting a raw deal. This is not a clinical decision under my understanding but we do want to press the PCT on this. Why suddenly has the rug, yet again, been pulled?"

To hear more from Anne Main click here