There will be a second public meeting held by the Clinical Commissioning Group on this Thursday evening (May 29th) at St Lawrence’s Church Heanor, 7pm to 8:30pm. I hope you can attend to show again the feeling in the Town about the future of the Hospital.
Unfortunately due to a prior commitment I cannot attend but I met with the Chief Executive of the CCG, Andy Layzell, last Friday to discuss the position.
He advised me that:
1) The preferred option was likely to be constructing a new building on the site for out patients appointments;
2) There was money available for this already so it would not need to be bid for;
3) In the meantime they were planning to use the Heanor Clinic site on Wilmot Street for outpatients appointments in addition to using the old fire station on the market place for blood testing.
4) It was likely that the overnight beds that used to be at Heanor would not return from Ilkeston Hospital. However they are keen to provide some specific palliative/end of life care in the local area and were considering rolling out a system that has been successful elsewhere in the County where they have 2 dedicated beds at a local residential home where staff are specially trained. The new building on the Florence Shipley site may also be suitable for some of the other patients who used to go to the hospital.
5) This was based on the first round of consultation and there would be a formal round of consultation to follow before any final decision.
This does seem to represent good news in that they plan to have a new fit-for-purpose building on the site and that the funding is available. We clearly need to press them to ensure that the services provided in the wards are returned to Heanor. The timescale for the new building also looks quite slow and ought to be able to be accelerated.
Please let me know your views and I’ll keep the pressure on the CCG and others to ensure this is delivered.
I submitted our petition to Parliament on 11th March 2014. None of this would have been possible without the 3,000 signatures of concerned constituents, so thank you.