Whilst the Government’s recent decision to continue the rebuilding and renovation of Watford General Hospital should be enthusiastically welcomed, it is being undermined by campaign groups who want to the hospital in Watford to be replaced by a new hospital at an unspecified greenfield site in the Hemel Hempstead/St Albans area.

An ostensibly apolitical group named Dacorum Patients Group but which is led by a prominent Liberal Democrat Town Councillor has held several meetings where Watford Hospital is described as “the worst hospital in western Europe”.

Less than two years ago this group presented a petition to parliament asking for a new hospital to be built to replace Watford General Hospital which was correctly rejected by the government.

This slur apart from being untrue is insulting to the hard-working doctors, nurses and ancillary workers who have done so much to turn this hospital around.

Hemel Hempstead hospital contracted during the Tory/Liberal Democrat coalition governments tenure in 2010/15 with the maternity and accident and emergency departments closing.

It is interesting that the Liberal Democrats did not appear to see this as a problem when their party was in government but they apparently do now that they are out of office.

I suspect that the coalition government at the time originally wanted to sell this land as part of their state asset ‘fire sale’ programme of offloading public assets, but had they discharged their duty of due diligence they should have known that there is a covenant on this land stating that it can only be used for hospital and healthcare provision.

Recently, private health care providers have sprung up on the site which conforms to the governments ‘public bad, private good’ political dogma.

Many alternative sites for this new hospital in greenfield sites to no avail and in view of the fact that Berkhamsted is a conversation area and apparently immune to mass re-development blighting other towns and villages in the area, without a corresponding improvement of the infrastructure.

So the only viable alternative site for this new hospital to replace Watford General could be the old Hemel Hospital site, of which much has been allowed to go into a state of disrepair which begs the question: Why would taxpayers want to fund a completely new hospital in Hemel Hempstead when there was already one there in the first place?

The government has always made it clear that it was either Watford or a new site in the Dacorum/St Albans area and as there is neither a viable site for this new hospital nor a coherent plan on how it is to be funded and build by 2015, then this scheme is simply ‘pie in the sky’.

Watford is the most highly populated town in West Herts and it is continually growing with new developments and as Watford General Hospital is easily accessible from St Albans, Hemel Hempstead and Berkhamsted and Tring via an excellent rail link, the continuance of Watford General Hospital is the only viable option.

Ian Kirkham

The Queens Drive, Chorleywood