PRESS RELEASE - 25 MAY 2000 Worcestershire Health Authority condemnation of 'shock report' backfires. All the data is taken from WHA publications which the Chief Executive confirmed in writing on 10 May 2000 had not been changed!

The people in the whole of Worcestershire will know that the Kidderminster Hospital Campaigners have never sought to undermine the provision of a new hospital for Worcester. The latest report, out today, is no attempt to scupper the building of this much needed facility for Worcester people.

When the building of this new hospital was out for consultation in 1997 it was not opposed by the Redditch and Kidderminster Community Health Councils because it was to be a replacement for outdated buildings in Worcester alone and was to have no impact on hospital provision in the rest of the county.

This is our objection. That a hospital planned and approved for the people of South Worcestershire suddenly became a replacement for Kidderminster and some services from Redditch as well. This has led to the imminent closure of inpatient services at Kidderminster and an apparent reduction of beds between Worcester and Kidderminster to about one third of the English average for bed provision.

Professor Pollock's report draws attention to facts readily available in "Investing in Excellence" and the outline and full business cases for the new hospital - the health authority's own data. The report proves that the WHA cannot afford the new hospital and that even with the downgrading of Kidderminster General Hospital there is still a large affordability gap. The figures are the WHA's own. If the total cost of the new hospital is not £108 millions, what is it? If the total number of beds to replace 673 beds at Worcester and Kidderminster is not 474, what is it?

Mr Musgrove's comments are predictable. Under "Investing in Excellence" services at Kidderminster were bound to collapse before the new hospital was ready for them - engineered fragility as it has been described. Thus we have to accept early moves unless, at last, the message of the disastrous inadequacy of the unworked through plans for the provision of hospital care for the whole county becomes known to patients and doctors of the whole county, to all our MPs and to the only two people who can still call a halt, not to the new hospital, but to these actual changes, Mr Blair and Mr Milburn.

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Further information from Dr Richard Taylor