Fix our Hospital!
In January 2025 the government confirmed that the new hospital building that we so badly need in Sutton will be delayed until at least 2032. The previous Conservative Government made promises they knew they couldn’t deliver when they pledged a new hospital building for local people by 2025.
The money to fix our hospital never existed, the work was never going to start. They had five years in Government to make it happen but they failed to deliver. Now the Labour Government have left us on a crippling waiting list - with no spades in the ground until at least 2032.
This delay means patients will continue to languish in corridors and surgeries will be cancelled. It’s an outrage, and I fear it represents a terminal diagnosis for the hospital. St Helier will not endure another decade. We need the new hospital building now.
The people of Sutton will rightly be exasperated that they have been overlooked once again. We cannot go on like this. The Government has one last chance to do the right thing and change course. They must speed up this process quickly.
One local resident reached out to tell me her story. Just before Christmas 2024 her husband, who is receiving chemotherapy, was admitted to A&E at St Helier with a life-threatening case of neutropenic sepsis, highly vulnerable to infection.
Despite being a high-risk patient, he waited 52 hours on a trolley in A&E before being transferred to an isolation room on a ward, but not before he was almost discharged despite his life-threatening condition.
She says she feared that if she had not been there to speak up for him, her husband might not have survived. Her story shows why St Helier needs urgent repair.
I'm continuing to hold the Government to account over their outrageous delays to the repairs to St Helier hospital, and to getting Sutton the new hospital building it was promised.
In 2025 after months of asking, the Government finally agreed to meet with me over the future of St Helier. I took the chance to push the Minister once again on the urgency of providing funding for vital repairs at St Helier so that local people can continue to access vital care there, and so that the scandal of treating patients in corridors under crumbling ceilings can end.
They still have not recognised the importance of moving forward these vital works - so I will continue to work with my Lib Dem colleagues and others to make sure they sit up and listen.
St Helier is crumbling in front of our eyes - putting patients and staff at risk. It just isn't good enough for the Govt to keep delaying vital works until the next decade. The Govt must listen and speed up these works now.
Deliver our new hospital building!
We the undersigned demand the Government take Epsom and St Helier Trust off the waiting-list and deliver a new hospital building urgently.
