This page increasingly features letters against our planned new hospital buildings in Watford, such as the one last week from Mr Cartmell of Berkhamsted.

In addressing his points, I hope to give regular readers confidence that we are getting ever closer to major improvements at our hospitals in Hemel Hempstead, St Albans and Watford.

The need is urgent, which is why we are pursuing the option that will deliver new and better buildings in the shortest timescale possible.

Our intention is for a new hospital at Watford on land next to our current site – and not at all the ‘botched-up makeover’ that Mr Cartmell alleges.

We have been honest about our cost estimates. They are driven by an expansion in clinical space and new costs for digital technology and net zero carbon. Increased inflation and changes to the funding rules have also contributed. These factors apply to other hospital trusts at the same stage as us in the New Hospital Programme and they would apply equally to the new hospital proposed by campaigners.

Those who say this option would be cheaper are, quite simply, wrong. Readers deserve to see the detail if campaigners are so keen to claim their plans are half the price. An external assessment in 2020 – carried out at the request of campaigners – of our calculations and theirs highlighted a drastic underestimate in their costs for a new hospital on a new site.

For our part, time and not money, is the key criteria. Writing letters is one thing but being a board member of a hospital trust where you know that the efforts of our brilliant workforce and the experience of our patients are being let down by our buildings, is another entirely. Our responsibility is to secure improvements as quickly as possible and not pursue speculative options that will lead to delays, or even worse, fail to ever become a reality. We are simply not prepared to take that risk.

We have been open to considering other options but an independent feasibility study (which is on our website) concluded that the alternative sites had high ‘deliverability’ risks and would take longer to develop. That longer time frame does not relate to the build but to the process of identifying a suitable site, securing planning consent, commercial negotiations and infrastructure improvements, like roadworks and utilities. We have weighed all of this up carefully.

Finally, Mr Cartmell raises concerns about how we ran our information meeting earlier this month. We welcome feedback and are continuously testing different approaches. We had already written to participants to say that at our next meeting we will keep the chat function visible for all who wish to see it. We hope it is used to ask succinct and relevant questions and to respect the right of others to do so.

Helen Brown

Deputy Chief Executive,

West Hertfordshire Hospitals NHS Trust