Littlehampton hospital battle lines drawn

A week today, on Gordon Brown's first full day as Prime Minister, Labour party members from Littlehampton will walk up Downing Street to deliver their renewed plea for the hospital to be built.

The group will call on Mr Brown and the government to press NHS officials in West Sussex to go ahead with the 9m hospital scheme, which was postponed last year at the 11th hour, days before work should have started.

But yesterday's announcements by West Sussex Primary Care Trust (PCT) about the future of the health service in the county appear to make the Littlehampton campaigners' battle even more challenging '“ it seems unlikely that the hospital project will even be mentioned in the consultation document soon to be made public as part of the Fit for the Future .

The PCT did, however, give details of the three options affecting Worthing Hospital and St Richard's Hospital, Chichester. Two envisage St Richard's becoming the county's major general hospital, with Worthing downgraded to a local general hospital. The third sees Worthing as the major general hospital, and St Richard's as a local general.

Asked by the Gazette whether the PCT would give a commitment to the building of a new community hospital at Littlehampton, chief executive John Wilderspin said it would make no sense to plan for such a development before the consultation, and while the future of the acute hospitals at Worthing, Chichester and Haywards Heath was yet to be decided.

There was a similarly frustrating response from the PCT amid heated exchanges at an Arun Council meeting earlier this month, when the trust's director of strategy, Sara Weech, refused to confirm that #10m of funding originally set aside for the Littlehampton project was no longer ring-fenced.

Former town mayor Mark Butler, who was given a written assurance by another NHS executive last year that the money was protected, asked Sara Weech, the PCT's director of strategy, three times whether the funding was still safe.

After failing to obtain what he felt was a straight answer, Mr Butler declared: "I'll take that as a no."

Ms Weech replied: "I cannot commit to that ring-fenced resource here and now."

Although Ms Weech was giving a wide-ranging presentation on the controversial Fit for the Future reorganisation, with some pointers to the prospects for Worthing and St Richard's Hospitals, Littlehampton councillors were most keen to press for answers on the delayed hospital scheme for their town.

NHS officials who put the project on hold said it would be wrong to build a new hospital in Littlehampton when the rest of the health service across West Sussex was in the melting pot.

However, Mr Butler and Littlehampton Labour colleague councillor Mike Northeast argue that the community hospital development had been exhaustively discussed and carefully designed through years of planning, to meet the needs of the town and surrounding areas, right down to the final detail, including the meals to be served.

"It met all the criteria 18 months ago, when they knocked down our old hospital, and it still meets all the criteria for the role of community hospitals, set out by Ms Weech in her presentation," said Mr Butler.

"Ours should have been a flagship hospital for the rest of West Sussex," said Mr Northeast. "If they had gone ahead and built it, as they should have done, it would have been the model for the rest of the county to follow."

They are delighted that their delegation will be in Downing Street as Mr Brown moves into No 10.

"It's phenomenal that we may well be the first group to go there as Gordon Brown takes power and that we can take the views of the people of Littlehampton to the door of power. He has said his number one priority will be the NHS, so let him start in Littlehampton," added Mr Butler.