The Royal Free in Hampstead

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THE chairman of the Royal Free warned NHS chiefs they were making a mistake as they confirmed their decision to shut down the hospital’s maternity and neonatal unit on Tuesday.

Mark Lam told the North Central London Integrated Care Board (ICB) at a meeting in the Greenwood Centre that keeping the unit in Hampstead open “was and is a viable option” and asked “what else will we be giving up?”.

ICB chiefs could not rule out redundancies or provide any clear certainty about whether capital investment would be available to complete an overhaul of maternity services across north London, which has been promised in light of the closure.

Mr Lam said the NHS was struggling to make ends meet as it was and added that the decision had left a dedicated team of frontline NHS workers “incredibly anxious” about their future.

A date for the closure of the maternity unit has not been set, but the days are numbered at the unit where thousands of people reading this article were born.

There are concerns from experts in the field that a long drawn-out project to shut the unit will trigger an exodus of midwives from the hospital – leaving crucial posts that the NHS finds already difficult to fill.

Mr Lam said: “As a board, we agree that doing nothing is not an option. We respect the logic.

“But we continue to assert that we run an excellent service and we are very proud of our work there. It was and is a viable option.”

Dr Mark Lam

Mr Lam said despite the declining birthrate there had been at the hospital an increase in “complexity of births”, something the Royal Free unit specialises in.

He told the meeting: “Our staff are incredibly anxious. This is going to require years of intense investment and we are already under enormous strain.

“Even today we just about have the capital to just about get ahead of the depreciation of our estate. You might prioritise this work, but what else will we be giving up?”

During the consultation, the public had been told that if the plan was approved around £67million capital investment would be put into upgrading facilities at the four remaining units in north central London – UCLH, Barnet, the Whittington, and the North Middlesex.

But it emerged in the meeting that this would come out of the current pot of funding available to the NHS – potentially taking away from other much needed upgrades to crumbling hospital infrastructure.

Dr Simon Caplan, a GP voice on the ICB board, said: “We have seen so often that funding has been promised but [has] not always arrived in time to deliver the service.

“Can we be assured that we can actually get this up and running and not be put on the back burner for 10 years?”

The ICB had argued that it had been forced into a “difficult decision” due to plunging birth rates leaving the unit surplus to requirements.

It was argued that the lack of work for maternity staff could lead to the patient service deteriorating – with one NHS official making the analogy of a pilot who doesn’t get to fly very often forgetting what they had learned.

The first choice unit for closure was always the Royal Free because it does not provide the same level of neonatal care as the others.

MP Tulip Siddiq

Births have been dropping year on year there since 2018 by about 12 percent, the ICB said.

The New Journal reported last February on a leaked joint letter from more than 50 Royal Free consultants who raised “significant concerns” about the plan “sidelining the welfare of women” and “putting lives at risk”.

Tulip Siddiq, the Labour MP for Hampstead and Highgate, has warned against the closure and on Tuesday -– just before the board’s decision ­– challenged Health secretary Wes Streeting in debate in the House of Commons: “Will he meet me to see how I can save my local maternity unit, which looked after me so well when I had gestational diabetes?”

She has always praised the services at the Royal Free for its vital work during an emergency caesarean birth.

A few hours later, the ICB agreed to shut the Royal Free unit and the Whittington, which was vaguely offered as an alternative closure option, was spared the chop.

Islington Labour councillors immediately went out celebrating the decision – in a “we saved the maternity unit” press photo call.

Critics of Labour in central government say it has done nothing to reverse years of Tory austerity in the NHS and is gearing up for a new round of cuts to the health service.

NHS England – which gives the final say on the maternity closure – is being axed as part of reforms.
Sarah Mansuralli, chief strategy officer who has been leading the Start Well project, said: “It is really key that we retain the high-quality staff we have got in these services, who are doing a tremendous job.

“We must reassure members of public that nothing changes immediately – that is key to making sure we have a managed transition to a new model of care across the four sites.”

ICB chief executive Frances O’Callaghan said: “We know how hard staff work to provide services which are highly valued. However, the current arrangements cannot continue as they are.”

Labour hold celebration party outside the Whittington Hospital

Labour’s wild celebrations after it was confirmed the Whit’s baby unit would be staying open

. LABOUR councillors in Islington set up a photo call to tell everyone that they had been instrumental in saving the Whittington’s baby unit on Tuesday – even though the Royal Free had from day one always been the maternity department expected to be cut.

Party members had organised a petition in support of the Whit – although nobody had ever really expected the cut to be made there instead of the Free – making it possibly the easiest campaign in local history to win.