My wife and I attended the Public Meeting at Blenheim School and can understand the concept of providing specialist centres of excellence. We thought that we already had one in Epsom. We realise that we originally had two, but the fairly recent state of the art, very expensive A&E has been transferred to the crumbling and difficult to travel to by public transport St Helier Hospital.
It now seems that the also very expensive and highly acclaimed Orthopaedic Centre is to be packed into cardboard boxes and transferred to the equally difficult to travel to by public transport Kingston Hospital.
Where does that leave Epsom Hospital? A very desirable site for yet more housing development? A repeat of the closure of the Mental Hospitals with a promise to provide “Care in the Community” whatever that was supposed to mean. What happened to the vast amount of money the NHS received for those sales?
Why are such satellites as The Cottage, Leatherhead, Cobham and West Park “Hospitals” still practising? Why are patients being referred to these instead of Epsom Hospital? Could it be that the Better Services, Better Value Team have been given the ultimatum “Close Epsom Hospital and find evidence and a way to make it necessary.”
Epsom, a once famous market town has recently lost the Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages, the County Court, the Magistrates and Coroners Courts, the Police Station and now seems about to lose its Hospital. As Chris Grayling pointed out “If Epsom residents are required to travel to Tooting for specialist treatment, then why not expect Tooting residents to travel to Epsom?”
Come on Residents of Epsom and other areas of Surrey, who want to keep our hospital. demand the closure of satellites and the transfer of their staff to Epsom Hospital, Unite behind Chris Grayling. If you are told that you need hospital treatment demand to go to Epsom (allegedly our choice). Bang the drum.
If we lose any more of our institutions we’ll lose our market town status and simply become another Borough of London, albeit with our Charles ll and Nell Gwynne history, perhaps a Royal Borough.
Yours faithfully
Colin Thomas
Wheelers Lane
Epsom
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