Ealing health campaigners are cautiously celebrating after the NHS confirmed plans to cut 500 acute hospital beds in north west London have been put on hold for five years.

Ealing Save our NHS campaigners have fought tirelessly to stop the beds being cut and hospital services being reduced at Ealing and Charing Cross hospitals.

NHS North West London had been planning to remove the beds since 2012 as part of its Shaping a Healthier Future plan to transform health care and make it more community based.

But in an October 18 response to a report commissioned by London Mayor Sadiq Khan, which said that plans to reduce the use of hospitals and cut bed numbers were "not credible on the scale proposed", NHS NWL said: "We do not think we will end up with fewer hospital beds in NW London over the next five years, and would not decrease numbers unless it is safe to do so."

The Mayor’s report, which was produced by independent health experts The King’s Fund, also criticised the speed in which plans were pulled together and the lack of engagement with local authorities, staff and the public.

But NHS NWL says it has always been committed to revising its initial projections for numbers of beds in line with the numbers of patients who need them and in fact nothing has changed.

Its response to the King's Fund report reads: "In line with the King’s Fund report, we do not think we will end up with fewer hospital beds in north west London over the next five years, and would not decrease numbers unless it is safe to do so.

"While this is a change from the initial plan set out through our 2016 Strategic Transformation Plan, the figures used were set back in 2012 and were provisional and based on projected activity.

"We have always been committed to revising our initial projections for future hospital bed numbers in line with actual activity. Our latest analysis suggests that the number of beds in north west London has gone up slightly since 2012 and we expect the number of bed numbers to stay more or less constant for the next five years at least. All our health providers are committed to working together to ensure that patients are safely cared for, and make best use of all our resources, beds estate and staff across north west London."

Ealing Council leader Julian Bell, who has played a key role in the campaign alongside the Ealing Save Our NHS group, says the King's Fund response is a significant turning point.

He said: "I am pleased that the NHS has finally recognised that it is not safe to take these beds out of the system. Everything our Save Our Hospitals campaign has said for the past six years has been vindicated.

"While there is still a long way to go before we can be sure services are saved, I want to thank our local campaigners who have marched, signed petitions, taken part in surveys and shared their opposition to scrapping essential health services. We know nine out of 10 local people are opposed to these plans but without this public pressure I fear plans could have been railroaded through."

Campaigners have welcomed the news for Ealing Hospital but say guarantees of investment are now needed

However, campaigners remain cautious that the A&E departments at the two hospitals which faced being downgraded under the plans, could still be under threat long term.

Cllr Binda Rai, Ealing's cabinet member for health and adults’ services, said: "An axe has been hanging over our A&Es for the last six years.

"The staff working in these hospitals, the public and the council need assurances that in any new plan that they will be saved from closure. We also want to know that service won’t be run down through lack of investment and then closed via the backdoor.

"In NHS planning terms – five years isn’t a long time. There are many questions that need answers and so I will be pressing the NHS to meet with us and explain in more detail the implications of its announcement. Alongside the community campaign, Ealing Council will continue to fight to protect our local NHS services including A&Es at Ealing and Charing Cross hospitals."

Ealing Save our NHS campaigner Eve Turner said the group welcomes the announcement that no beds will go for five years but added that the NHS needs to start putting money into Ealing Hospital now as it has been "under- resourced for so long".

The Mayor’s report, which was produced by independent health experts The King’s Fund, also criticised the speed in which plans were pulled together and the lack of engagement with local authorities, staff and the public.

In March 2018, representatives of Ealing Council along with a delegation of community campaigners submitted the Save Our Hospitals petition to the Department of Health. It had more than 22,000 signatures.

When hundreds of people marched to Save Our Hospitals:

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How does the NHS plan to base healthcare in the community?

Meanwhile NHS NWL has announced its preferred bidder for the contract to run community healthcare services in North West London for the next ten years.

It has tendered a wide range of community services, including mental health and community nursing out to be run by one bidder in a contract rumoured to be worth in the region of £1million.

It hopes this will help create the kind of supported community care that will eventually allow it to reduce the number of hospital beds.

The preferred bidder has been announced as West London NHS Trust, working alongside Central & North West London NHS Foundation Trust, the Hillingdon Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and other partners. The contract start date is planned for May 2019.

NHS England and NHS Improvement will now undertake the final stages of their regulatory process and following approval, will move to contract award.

Dr Mohini Parmar, Chair of Ealing CCG, said: “This is really exciting news. West London NHS Trust and their partners' bid was outstanding and they have shown a clear understanding of what we want to achieve and a willingness to embrace the challenge of delivering fully integrated health and care services.

“At the moment, patients who have more complex health care needs have to see many different providers. Often communication and coordination between the providers is not as good as it should be, so we believe putting the majority of community services into one contract will over a period of time break down organisation boundaries and increase coordination and establish a landscape where care is centred on the needs of the patient as a whole.”

Some of the services included in the contract are:

  • Community adults and children’s nursing and therapy services
  • Intermediate care services to support patients being treated closer to home as an alternative to acute hospital admission: helping local hospitals to ensure they are hospital settings
  • Clayponds Community Hospital which includes beds for those needing intensive physical rehabilitation and enhanced nursing support who would, otherwise, be at risk of admission to a general hospital
  • Enhanced primary care (GP) services supporting Ealing’s nursing homes
  • Primary care mental health support teams
  • Dementia support teams
  • Adult Learning Disability Services