Four London hospitals axe casualty units

Four hospitals have agreed to axe their casualty units under plans to create five “super hospitals” in west London.

Ealing, Hammersmith, Charing Cross and Central Middlesex are now set to lose their accident and emergency departments over the next three years.

Emergency care for two million Londoners living in eight boroughs will only be retained at St Mary’s, Chelsea and Westminster, West Middlesex, Northwick Park and Hillingdon hospitals.

Responsing to a public consultation, health trust chiefs backed a controversial shake-up of health services to save money and treat an ageing, increasingly obese population in community surgeries rather than hospital wards.

However the plans, which are due to be approved early next year by NHS North West London, attracted 60,000 signatures to an opposition petition in Ealing, Brent and Hammersmith, while more than 15,500 people completed consultation response forms. Boris Johnson will be asked on Wednesday (17) to oppose the changes.

Ealing council leader Julian Bell said: “There is still significant clinical opposition to these proposals. I think there is an issue of consultants and GPs not wanting to put their heads above the parapet.

“These proposals are based on old population figures from 2008. Since then, west London had bad a borough the size of Bexley dropped on it, with the population growing by 225,000. Taking four out of nine A&Es away is incredibly risky. I’ve yet to find anybody who supports the proposals other than those who are on the NHS payroll.”

In its response to the consultation, Ealing Hospital NHS Trust said it was “untenable” to retain the status quo. North West London NHS Trust backed the proposals and said new operating theatres were being built at Northwick Park, where a larger A&E department was also being planned.

However Imperial College said its backing was conditional on the NHS picking up a “very substantial” bill to rebuild its medical school - one of the biggest in the country with 2,200 students - on its St Mary’s site in Paddington.

Imperial said it supported making Hammersmith a specialist research hospital and downgrading Charing Cross to become a local hospital “on the conditional basis that the NHS fully funds the creation of any replacement education and research facilities for Imperial’s medical school”.