Wednesday 8 April 2009

'Wandsworth NHS' Secretive About Proposed New Health Centre At Clapham Junction

The ongoing saga of 'Wandsworth NHS' proposed new Health Centre, somewhere near Clapham Junction, gets more and more intriguing.
Despite repeated requests to 'Wandsworth PCT', and then the renamed 'NHS Wandsworth', no information has been forthcoming about either, the costs of the project, who will build the health centre, or, how it will be financed.
The tenders for the project had an information day back in October of last year. Who the they were nobody knows, and NHS Wandsworth considers such information a commercial secret,so even the names of the possible bidders are kept from the public.
The contract was to be awarded on 31 March, but clearly something has happened at 'NHS Wandsworth' , and it will not now be awarded for a, 'few weeks.
What is worrying for tax payers is that the contract maybe awarded to a commercial company, someone like 'United Health', the American healthcare company who are trying to gain a foothold in our NHS. They have already, despite widespread local opposition, won the contract for three GP surgeries in Camden.
We certainly don't want our health becoming a commodity that can be bought and sold at the market place.
Another possibility may be that the new Health Centre will be built under a LIFT scheme(Local Improvement Finance Trust).This extremely expensive method of building NHS facilities involves a consortium of private companies doing the construction, and then leasing the property back to the local NHS over a period of twenty five, or so years.The recent example of St John's Therapy Centre,in Battersea, which was built under such a scheme, has cost the tax payers dear. During the period of the lease we will pay back almost five times what it cost to build the Therapy Centre.
So, maybe NHS Wandsworth are being secretive because they don't want the public to know just how their money is being wasted.
The new Health Centre, which they now called GP Led, is due to be up and running in 2009. The clock is ticking ; sooner or later the truth will out, and we will found out just how much this project is to cost us.

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