So who wants to close Charing Cross Hospital and Hammersmith Hospital's A&E? The local NHS do. They have to save £1 billion in the next two years and closing our hospitals is non-negotiable they say.
Imperial, who run the hospitals, also want to lose all A&E services in the borough. They are now talking privately about elective surgery continuing at Charing Cross and, though a lot of this would be private, keeping some form of hospital on the site and probably the medical school too.
Then there’s our Tory council that supports the closures so the Charing Cross site can be sold for luxury flats, but keeps pretending they have ‘saved’ Charing Cross by proposing a mishmash of GP and minor treatment services are left there.
Against these bureaucrats and cynics, the Save our Hospitals Group, run by residents and clinicians on a shoestring, has been doing rather well.
It raised 100,000 signatures against the closures.
It countered the Council’s propaganda and told residents the truth.
And it got the Government to order an independent review of the decision. That review is coming to an end but there is still just time to send in your views to: campaign@saveourhospitals.net and info@irpanel.org.uk.
If the Government still presses ahead with closures, we have a legal challenge coming up. And of course there are the May 2014 Council elections, where a defeat for the Tories would remove their control over this and many other important sites in the borough.
One way or another, we will fight on until we win the right to decent NHS services in Hammersmith & Fulham.
