At the packed public meeting held last Thursday evening at Carshalton Sports College to discuss the future of St Helier Hospital,  by a show of hands those present unanimously supported a vote of ‘No Confidence’ in the infamous Better Services Better Value (BSBV) review. 

This is the review that is proposing the closure of St Helier’s Accident & Emergency, Maternity, Pathology and Paediatric services.

After this vote I asked if there were any members of Sutton’s new Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) present.  Unfortunately there weren’t, which is surprising bearing in mind they will be responsible for commissioning Sutton’s Healthcare from April onwards.

I then proposed that Sutton CCG should immediately withdraw from the BSBV process and called upon our local MPs, Paul Burstow and Tom Brake to use their influence with this body to persuade the CCG to take this action – the CCG is led by their former Liberal Democrat Councillor colleague, Dr Brendan Hudson.

Messrs Brake and Burstow did not get the opportunity to reply to my proposal at the meeting, so I would like to ask them through the pages of your newspaper to state their position?  Were the CCG to take such action, the already discredited BSBV review would be virtually ‘dead in the water’ and St Helier hospital would have a chance of surviving.

Yours faithfully,

Andrew Theobald

Chair, Carshalton & Wallington Labour Party