HOSPITAL bosses were grilled and heckled at a lively debate discussing the future of Ealing Hospital.

Hundreds of protesters, including residents, NHS staff, community and faith leaders, Labour MPs Steve Pound and Virendra Sharma, and Ealing councillors, filled Ealing Town Hall on Wednesday night to hear NHS North West London defend their controversial plans to reshape care in the area.

Under the preferred option, Ealing, Hammersmith and Charing Cross hospitals would lose their A&E departments and be downgraded to a ‘local hospital’. Ealing would also lose its paediatric and maternity units and left with a stand alone urgent care centre in a new, smaller building.

Dr Mark Spencer, medical director of NHS North West London, insisted the proposals were not financially driven, despite the need to find £1billion of savings.

“We’re facing unprecedented increase in demand in the NHS,” he said. “We have an ageing population, the number of people aged over 85 will double in the next 10 years, people with dementia and diabetes will increase.

“This needs addressing and addressing well.”

He said the NHS prefers fewer, bigger hospitals with 24/7 access to specialist consultants which will lead to better care. Seventy per cent of patients would continue to be cared for at their local hospital or in the community through an ‘out of hospital strategy’.

Dr Jenny Vaughan, a consultant at Ealing Hospital, issued a stark warning that Ealing’s urgent care centres would not be able to cope without the back up of surgeons and emergency staff on site in an area of high levels of coronary heart disease, diabetes and TB.

“The thing I find it very difficult to believe with these proposals is how will a stand alone urgent care centre function,” she said.

“NHS North West London are trying to deliver within a financial envelope. There are high levels of deprivation in this area. The people of Ealing are going to lose out as a result of this.”

NHS bosses were slammed for marginalising communities, particularly in Southall, who do not speak English as a first language and do not have access to the internet to view the 80 page consultation, described as ‘impenetrable’.

The Shaping a Healthier Future consultation document was not available in libraries for three weeks and not translated for six weeks.

Dr Onkar Sahota, a Southall GP and GLA member for Ealing and Hillingdon, said the proposals unfairly pit ‘hospitals against hospitals, communities against communities’.

He added: “This process is flawed, it doesn’t reach out to the people it’s supposed to, the people most vulnerable it affects.”

Residents were concerned at increased journey times to travel to St Mary’s in Paddington or Northwick Park in Harrow.

Dr John Lister, of London Health Emergency, labelled NHS’s proposed maximum journey times of 30 minutes as ‘fantasy figures’. But Dr Daniel Elkeles, director of strategy at NHS North West London, assured that when a decision was made, NHS would work with Transport for London to ensure sufficient transport links were in place.

Labour leader of Ealing Council, Julian Bell simply asked ‘are you listening and will you save our hospital?’, saying more than 40,000 people had signed the petition to save Ealing Hospital and thousands joined the march through Ealing on September 15.

The council commissioned an independent review of the proposals by former NHS chief executive Tim Rideout flagging up a number of concerns, which it will submit as its response to the consultation.

Southall MP Virendra Sharma said: “All parties and faith groups oppose this, charity and voluntary groups, and trade unions. What else do you need? I hope that anger and message will not be lost in the pieces of paper and reflected in the streets of Ealing. If they vote in Parliament, myself and Steve (Pound MP) will vote against it.”

People questioned the absence of Conservative MP Angie Bray and the silence of Mayor of London, Boris Johnson.

The consultation closes on Monday, October 8. To have your say, visit www.healthiernorthwestlondon.nhs.uk .