Hammersmith & Fulham Council's Conservative opposition leader has apologised for "mistakes" in his party's past handling of the long-running Charing Cross Hospital A&E saga.

Councillor Andrew Brown said the past Conservative administration should not have quit the cross-party-supported residents' campaign to save the hospital from health bosses' plans to transform it into a 'local hospital' without a blue-light A&E.

He also apologised for leaflets distributed by the party ahead of this year's local elections, claiming it had saved the hospital.

It comes amid fears the hospital will be downgraded and will no longer accept emergency cases when the controversial Shaping a Healthier Future (SaHF) transformation plan is introduced. It has been on the table for some five years but is yet to be fully implemented.

If it is, it will also affect Ealing Hospital which could lose its full A&E and more clinical services.

The Tories have now offered to reforge a cross-party collaboration to protect Charing Cross along with Save Our Hospitals activists, and to pressure health bosses to withdraw the plans, which are currently in a holding pattern due to sky-rocketing demand at the hospital.

Cllr Brown apologised to the full council on Wednesday night (October 17), claiming the previous administration had been "either misled or the NHS' position changed" on what the plans held.

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He said they believed they were supporting an improvement to the original proposal for Charing Cross, including a full A&E, retention of most services, and many acute beds, as well as a new building on the site to be completed before any existing ones were demolished.

"That position has been confirmed to me as accurate by senior local NHS leaders. Anything that I or other Conservative councillors, past or present, have said, is based on that context," his speech read.

But his speech was met with scepticism from Labour, which had tabled a motion claiming past Conservative leaders had held private talks with health bosses, then switched to supporting the controversial Shaping a Healthier Future (SaHF) plan and downplayed its threat to Charing Cross.

A war of words played out at the Town Hall where historic tweets and leaflets were brandished in the chamber and Cllr Brown accused Labour of trying to "humiliate" his party.

Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust and the NW London Collaboration of Clinical Commissioning Groups have said the current capacity and services at the hospital will be sustained while demand remains high.

But campaigners in the borough remain anxious about what the future will hold when the North West London Sustainability and Transformation Plan (STP), which has delayed the SaHF coming to fruition, finishes in 2021.

In his speech, Cllr Brown claimed "senior executives" at the hospital had said SaHF would never even come into action "as it would never be clinically safe to do so".

But council leader Cllr Stephen Cowan said Labour was intent on the plans being withdrawn to protect Charing Cross - which celebrates its bicentenary on October 30, for another 200 years.

Imperial issued a statement saying it had invested £7.2 million in expansion and redevelopment of its A&E.

“Plans to reduce acute and A&E capacity at Charing Cross will not progress unless and until there is a reduction in demand for acute hospital services, which will not be for the foreseeable future."