This Tuesday I put down my oft-repeated question in Parliament to the Secretary of State for Health: “When does she expect to announce a decision on the Malvern Hospital?”
Had the question been called, the answer no doubt, as usual, would have been “ask the local primary care trust”.
The problem with this is that, over the past 25 years, there have been so many faulty starts and false promises about the Malvern Hospital that there is mistrust of all those in authority on the matter.
What then is one to make of the latest moves by the Worcestershire Primary Care Trust?
Do they give any real hope that in the not too distant future a new hospital will be built in Malvern?
The PCT plan in Malvern now is to find a partner whose business is complementary to that of the proposed hospital and whose contribution would keep the operational costs (including the cost of capital) of the new hospital to the levels that would be incurred by the present facilities.
Such a partner could, for instance, be a provider of retirement homes.
The present management of the primary care trust is confident that genuine partners, willing not only to risk their own money but also to add in their own businesses, do exist (we are not talking here about simple developers or pure money-lenders).
This confidence that they can find the appropriate partner leads the PCT to believe that the additional costs, which inevitably go with building a new hospital, can be balanced through handing over part of the existing assets (such as the present hospital building) to the new partner.
This is why the PCT is spending some £50,000 employing consultants to help them place the necessary advertisement for partners in the Official Journal of the European Union (OJEU) by the autumn of this year.
My view is that there is no certainty that the project will meet the criteria now laid down for it ie. that it should incur no extra operational costs.
What I do now believe is that the Worcestershire Primary Care Trust does want to sort this matter out as quickly as possible.
For them it is now absorbing a good deal of management time and is costing them money.
They have nothing to gain by unnecessary further delay.
At last, after so many years, crunch time is imminent.
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