More than 1,000 so far back campaign for new hospital

 Kathy Marshall of Fighting4GranthamHospital says…

In the space of one week our petition for a new build, state of the art, hospital for Grantham has received over 1100 signatures. This is incredible progress and we’d like to thank everybody for their support so far. Anyone wishing to sign can find it here: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/242302

 We’ve also received a lot of questions about the petition, and exactly what it is we’re hoping to achieve with it, and we’d like to address some of these queries and concerns here.

1. Why do we need a new hospital?  The current hospital has an expensive backlog of issues that need addressing, but that would be difficult to do without it impacting on the ongoing services. There is a lot of asbestos that needs removing, maintenance work to ensure the buildings are structurally stable (on top of the ongoing maintenance to keep it functional and presentable), as well as fire safety work to bring the old buildings up to modern codes. The main building that houses the wards and treatment areas was build between the mid 50s and mid 60s, and the most recent major addition was the maternity block in 1972. It was built for a much smaller population and a completely different era of medical technology and practice. 
2. Why would it need to be on a new site? By far the most important reason for this is because it is important to ensure that patients can still access the current hospital services during the building process. To reuse the current site would require levelling the current hospital which would leave us completely without until the new build was completed. Given that this would be a long term project, leaving us without a functional hospital for a long period of time isn’t in anybody’s best interests. We want the staff to be able to continue to do their amazing work and we want people to be able to access healthcare when they need it.   There is also the issue of the limitations caused by the current site. It is not ideally located, in terms of accessing the major roads for patient transport, and Manthorpe Road is notorious for becoming gridlocked during peak traffic times. Also, due to the size constraints of the current site, we have NHS services dotted around town wherever they can be fitted, such as Caamhs and mental health services being located at the beaconsfield site, making it difficult to provide joined up care where needed. These are issues that could be easily resolved by a change of location.
3. Exactly how would a new build be funded? The petition is for capital funding from the government, which would come directly from their budget for public spending for infrastructure. Given that both the current government and the opposition have expressed the need to invest in NHS infrastructure, it is safe to assume that any funding from this source would remain secure regardless of the outcomes of any future elections. But that would only be one part of the required funding. We are hoping to secure some contributions from both the district and county councils, as well as local business and agriculture who want safe local healthcare for their workers. Another avenue to explore is the negotiation of a deal with the developers which sees investment in the new build on their part in return for the prime residential land that the current hospital occupies. Hopefully, this would include a clause stating that the original 1876 hospital building and the land gifted to the people of Grantham be repaired and used for the community, for example as a community centre or GP surgery. It’s a clause that stands a good chance of acceptance, since most developments have to include community buildings and the historical significance of the building would add character and value to the development. As a last, but by no means least, option we can also look at community fundraising. This would not only be a way for us to contribute to the services we want, but would also be a wonderful way of recognising the spirit of the original hospital and the efforts of our forebears.   These funding sources that we’re investigating would all mean that the new build hospital remains 100% owned be the NHS and won’t leave it saddled with crippling debt, the way that those funded through the now banned PFI and PFI 2 deals did.
4. How will a new hospital help get our A&E back? The three main reasons being given for not returning a full A&E to Grantham are; staff levels and retention, not enough user demand in comparison to the A&E departments at Boston and Lincoln so Grantham is always the one to lose out, and funding. We believe that a new hospital will have a major impact on all three of these issues, in the long term. Working for the NHS is not an easy job. When your work is of such an important and sensitive nature it never could be, and it’s this high pressure environment and the way that it impacts on staff morale and mental health that leads to problems with staff retention. While it would be impossible to completely remove that pressure, due to the nature of the job, being in an environment that provides purpose built facilities and state of the art equipment can go a long way to reducing some of it. This, combined with the new medical school in Lincoln should address the staffing issues.   The proposed housing developments in and around Grantham would make our town one of, if not the, biggest town in Lincolnshire. Having a state of the art hospital would encourage more people to take up residence here, so these go hand in hand for resolving the demand issues. Finally, a newly built hospital would have much lower maintenance costs and can be built with the latest innovations and technology to make it as energy efficient as possible, so would have much lower running costs too. This would resolve the issue with funding a full A&E.
5. Who would be running the new hospital? For decades, services at Grantham Hospital have been provided by a number of different health trusts. We see no reason why services couldn’t be commissioned from any of the local trusts in Lincolnshire and beyond.

Of course, this a long term solution. In the meantime we will still be fighting to reinstate our A&E and pushing for as much service provision as we can get until that happens, We just believe that the staff, who have made Grantham hospital the amazing and successful place it is, and the community who need it, now and in the future, deserve to have a hospital that will carry forward as the town grows.

If there are any further questions, feel free to join our Facebook page: https://m.facebook.com/groups/158598821210992?ref=share