Every so often when trawling through the archives, I come across a story which so echoes what’s going on today, it hardly seems like an “old” story at all.

One such appeared on July 14, 1978. Headed WATFORD HOSPITAL SHOCK (all in capital letters, just like that) the first paragraph reads: “People could be disappointed when Watford's new £11¾m hospital is opened. There is to be no expansion in the service, and waiting lists for admission could be as long as they are at the moment.”

Clearly the current situation with Watford Hospital and the “health” campus housing development is nothing new.

The more I read of the story, the more familiar it sounded.

It continued: “Modern facilities and buildings, and a new operating theatre suite, could make it possible to handle more patients, but not unless sufficient money is made available for more medical, nursing and other back-up staff.

“This was the picture given to the South-West Herts Community Health Council on Tuesday. Mr Martin Roberts, secretary of the new hospital working party, and district general administrator, told members about the new hospital and then faced a question-and-answer session.

“Health Council member Mr George Emery commented: ‘I think the general public in South-West Herts will be very disappointed.’

“Mr Roberts told the meeting when the new hospital was planned originally for the Shrodells site, it was to be a massive expansion of facilities to serve an estimated population of 202,000 in the 1980s.

“The population estimate had now been reduced to 150,000 people and they had been offered a ‘package deal’ for the modernisation of hospital facilities in Watford.

“Originally, too, it was planned to demolish old wards on the Shrodells site – I block and H block – in a follow-on phase. This part of the plan has now been abandoned.

“Mr Roberts then turned to the question of finance. No more money would be made available to the Area Health Authority to run the scheme, he said.

“The working party had to estimate what the running costs of the new hospital would be. At the moment this had not been done. There were overhead running expenses to which they were committed, whether or not there were any patients in the building.

“Modern hospital buildings were much more expensive to run than older ones, because of advanced technical equipment.

“When he was questioned later, Mr Roberts said using crude comparison, based on a sample of the running costs of 45 new hospitals, it could cost £1m more per year to run a modern hospital.

“Mr Roberts said in answer to other questions that the present ‘package’ involved only the replacement of existing facilities. He went on: ‘Unless we are able to improve our technique for handling patients I would envisage no reduction of the waiting lists.’”

No mention of concreting over much-loved allotments, but apart from that, who’d have thought that was all happening more than 30 years ago?

ONLINE TOMORROW: Barbara Windsor launches Watford Lottery