Wandsworth Council will officially challenge the decision to close St George’s hospital in Tooting, taking the issue to the new Secretary of State for Health following last week’s election.
“There has to be a better solution to these plans,” the leader of Wandsworth Council Simon Hogg said in a statement announcing the decision. “We are calling on the Secretary of State to work with us, and six other local authorities, to look at ways to keep specialist care here at St George’s hospital.”
St George’s provides specialist cancer care for children but under plans announced last year by the then-Conservative government, it is due to close with services moved to Evelina Hospital near Waterloo instead, starting in October 2026.
As well as Wandsworth, five other local authorities use St George’s for cancer care, and the announcement led to a coordinated campaign across Richmond, Merton, Kingston, Surrey and Sutton to reverse the decision. The campaign included an online petition that gathered over 12,000 signatures, a Parliamentary debate led by Twickenham MP Munira Wilson, and questions at Prime Minister’s Questions.
Leader of the Liberal Democrats Ed Davey also lent his voice to the debate having had person experience of both hospitals with his disabled son, John.
Despite a public comment period last December attracting [pdf] over 2,500 largely critical responses, NHS England decided on 14 March to move ahead [pdf] with the plans.
The process was begun following a policy decision that specialist cancer care must be on the same site as an intensive care unit and other specialist children services, something that is the case for both St George’s and Evelina hospital but not The Royal Marsden hospital.
That led to a decision to centre all such services in just one hospital and a scoring system pitched St George’s and Evelina against one another with St George’s ultimately scoring 75.3 per cent and Evelina 80.5 per cent.
Evelina came highest on criteria for interdependent services, support for children moving on to teenage services and broader criteria over research, whereas St George’s scored higher on patient and carer experience, travel times and quality of facilities.
Appeal
With a new government in place, the campaign hopes that the new health minister will reconsider closing the hospital, which would force seriously ill children to travel long distances through central London traffic for treatment. Travelling by public transport is a serious risk for children on immunosuppressant medication.
In the public consultation over the plans, 27 per cent of respondents cited the lack of car parking, 19 per cent noted the difficulty of getting into Central London, 13 per cent noted that Evelina hospital would take a long time to get to, and 13 per cent noted the problems with taking public transport.
In addition, 17 per cent noted that Evelina has a lack of previous experience and expertise with the specialist care available at St George’s, including paediatric cancer and neurosurgery. The lack of private rooms at Evelina was also highlighted as a significant concern given the fact that the new patients would be children dealing with cancer.
NHS England’s assessment also noted that going with St George’s would be cheaper, requiring £13.5m less than Evelina in capital investment and breaking even in 2030-31, whereas going with Evelina would lead to a £2 million-a-year deficit.
Critics also argue that the fact that NHS England made it clear from the outset that it preferred Evelina hospital that the consultation was little more than a box-ticking exercise rather than a serious consideration of patient concerns.
