Poor Old Bolingbroke Hospital -Sacrificed so that St George's Can Become A Foundation Trust

On Tuesday 27 January, 2009, the St George’s Healthcare Trust Board voted to make the long established Battersea hospital , the Bolingbroke, ‘surplus to requirements’. I say voted, that is rather a misnomer, there wasn’t a vote-there never is at St George’s Trust Board meetings. Everyone, as always was of one accord, and that was that the Bolingbroke must go. Despite the opposition of patients, the public ,and Wandsworth Council, the closure went ahead. Even a last minute plea at the meeting from a local councillor for a stay of execution failed to move the Trust Board.
The decision of course had much more to do with St George’s race to become a Foundation Trust Hospital than anything else. In order to gain FT status, St George’s must not only balance the books, but show a surplus-something that unless there is a last minute miracle they are unlikely to do.
So the Bolingbroke, like so much else of our family silver in the NHS, will be put up for sale.
What is particularly gruelling is that the decision was taken by a Board, who if St George’s does become a Foundation Trust ,won’t even be there in two years time. What is more, St George’s Trust Board, like all other NHS bodies, doesn’t even pretend to be democratic. It consists of full time employees, at director level, five non executive directors and a Chair. Both the non executive directors and the Chair are all appointed. There are no patient representatives, no staff representatives and no-one from the local authority on the governing body.
The decision to sell the Bolingbroke makes no sense whatsoever, economically. In case the Trust Board hadn’t noticed we are in a recession, and the property market is in the lead when it comes to plummeting prices. It’s what’s called a ‘buyers market’ and the Bolingbroke, like every other property, will have dropped in value.
For those with a good memory they will remember that is was only in 2004 that the Trust Board spent £2 million on renovating the Bolingbroke, only to discover, just after the work was completed, that the hospital was a fire risk. The hospital’s own internal inquiry into this embarrassing incident revealed that it had been known since 1989 that the Bolingbroke was a fire risk, and the hospital had been entered on the ‘at risk’ register in 2002. Apparently, this news hadn’t filtered through to those in charge and the net result was that because of the risk of fire the hospital had to be evacuated of elderly patients and services slowly withdrawn.
Two million pounds of tax payers money had been wasted ,plus the costs of finding room for other services, coupled with the money needed to find alternative accommodation for the Bolingbroke’s patients.
How much this little mishap cost it is impossible to say. What we do know is, from the internal report, no-body got so much as a hand slap. So two million plus pounds can be wasted but the message is ,’no-one is really to blame, and we can all carry on as before’.
So, St George’s Trust Board did exactly that. They carried on and almost five years later took the predictable decision to make the Bolingbroke, ‘surplus to requirements’
It is a sad end to one of Battersea’s old and dearly loved hospitals. Along with St James, St John’s, the Anti Vivisection hospital(Battersea General)it has been consigned to the scrap heap.
The motto of the old Battersea Borough Council was, ‘not for you, not me , but for us’.
Public property, no less than any other type of property should be valued and preserved not sold off on the cheap to balance the books. The Bolingbroke belongs to ‘us’, it should not end its life as a plaything of property speculators .It should be kept and utilised for users of the NHS, maybe not in its present capacity but in some other.
Users of the Bolingbroke have been transferred to St John’s Therapy Centre on St Johns’ Hill, built on all that remains of the land once occupied by St John’s Hospital. It’s a new building and many are impressed by its structure and design. So they ought to be –it has cost us dear.
The Centre was built by a consortium of private companies who trade under the name of ‘Building Better Health’, the mainstay of the group appears to be the builders Wilmott Dixon, but they all get a slice of the cake. It was built under the notoriously expensive LIFT scheme, Local Improvement Finance Trust. Under this arrangement, very similar to the equally discredited Private Finance Initiative for building hospitals, private companies borrow the money and construct the building , and then lease it back, over a fixed period, to the NHS. In the case of the St John’s Therapy Centre the building cost £7 million to build, but the total repayments over the term of the contract will be in the region of £35 million Accurate judgements are difficult to make, because repayments are linked to the Retail Price Index. Schemes such as these have been described in the press as ‘honey pots’ for investors.
So the outlook for health services in the old Battersea area does not bode well. A valuable NHS site looks like it will be sold off to the highest bidder. And a new building on the site of an old hospital will cost the tax payer five times what it cost to build. Neither looks like good business practice.