Meetings to share updates on hospital plans

Residents will have an opportunity to hear about the latest plans and progress with developing hospital sites in west Hertfordshire at NHS meetings during October and November.

The meetings, led by West Herts Hospitals Trust and Herts Valleys Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG), are taking place in each area. Dates and venues are as follows:

The meetings will explain work that is happening over the next few months to further refine thinking on the strategic outline case for redeveloping hospital sites. This work to update and refine the SOC has been requested by national regulators, NHS England and NHS Improvement following discussions with the Trust and CCG.

Helen Brown, Acting Chief Executive at West Herts Hospitals Trust says: “We’re doing some further work to our strategic outline case to satisfy NHS Improvement and NHS England that our plans are solid.

“Things have moved on in the 12 months since we submitted our strategic outline case and in view of that we need to look again at some of our figures, both around patient numbers and finances.  In particular we need to look at how we can make our plans as affordable as possible by looking at how we can do the development in phases.

“While we’re doing that additional work we’ll look at the feasibility of an alternative option that would bring planned care onto a single site. However, the proposal to develop planned care on the St Albans and Hemel Hempstead hospital sites as set out in the original SOC currently remains our preferred way forward.”

The meetings will also share plans for how services could be delivered across various sites and will explain how the Trust and the CCG intend to involve local people in work to refine the hospital plans.

There will also be an opportunity to put questions about hospital redevelopment work to executive officers and health professionals from the Trust and the CCG.

To allow us to cater for everyone who wants to attend, please email communications.hvccg@nhs.net to book onto this event.  Please state when booking which event you would like to attend and let us know if you have any particular accessibility needs.