News Date: Tuesday 7th October 2008
Tim welcomes suspension of Fit for the Future
Tim has welcomed the decision by West Sussex Primary Care Trust to suspend the Fit for the Future process.
It means that the Primary Care Trust (PCT) has effectively halted the implementation of the Fit for the Future proposals for the time being. It follows an announcement by the Royal West Sussex NHS Trust, which runs St Richard's Hospital in Chichester, and the Worthing and Southlands Hospitals NHS Trust that a merger is being pursued which could bring the two trusts together from as early as April 2009.
Tim commented:
"I fully support the moves by Worthing and St Richard's hospitals to come together and form a strong independent foundation trust covering a substantial part of West Sussex including all of my constituents. It will enable them to grow and develop services in tune with what local people need and want determined by local clinicians not by regional health bureaucrats. In the long term it should also provide a substantial and sustainable centre of excellence across two sites which will mean many people will no longer have to go out of West Sussex to find treatment or give birth and we need no longer be regarded as poorer relations of Brighton or Portsmouth.
'This is an excellent way forward which many of us in the KWASH campaign supported right at the start of the Fit For The Future consultation. We must, however, raise serious question about the millions the PCT has spent on this consultation exercise. To most people in West Sussex this process has always been unwanted, unworkable and unsustainable. After years of mass campaigning and uncertainty, not least for the staff, I hope we can at last regain some stability and get on with the job of providing the excellent health services which we all need and deserve.'
