Video – hundreds march in Shipston for beds at the new Ellen Badger Hospital

THE enormous strength of feeling in Shipston over the removal of beds from the town’s Ellen Badger Hospital was on show on Saturday (5th August) when around 650 people turned out in pouring rain to protest.

Among those taking part were a number of elderly residents from the Low Furlong Care Home, who were being pushed in wheelchairs by staff from the Shipston home. Despite the weather the residents were determined to vent their anger at the decision.

South Warwickshire NHS Foundation Trust (SWFT) has decided the new Ellen Badger Hospital, which is being rebuilt at a cost of £8.2 million, will not have any beds.

At one point, Shipston’s hospital had 16 community beds, but following a review the beds do not form part of plan for the new hospital.

South Warwickshire’s community beds will instead be retained at the Nicol Unit in Stratford Hospital, 11 miles from Shipston, with the remainder in Leamington, which is 17 miles away.

While SWFT has said it is increasing the number of community beds from 35 to 41, it is of little consolation to the people of Shipston and the surrounding area who feel they were promised a new hospital, but are getting a large new building with little in the way of health facilities.

One large protest has already been held in Shipston, but with campaigners feeling they’re not being listened to, hundreds of people took to the streets again.

Among those at the demo was the broadcaster and television doctor Sarah Jarvis, who has joined the people of Shipston and surrounding areas in condemning the policy of depriving the town of community beds.

Dr Jarvis told the Herald: “I think the real concern is about the erosion of intermediate care hospital beds in recent years. Hospital bed numbers have more than halved overall over the past 30 years, despite the fact that our population is continuing to get older and older.”

She added: “The average number of hospital beds across the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries per head of population is five beds per thousand people. We have two-and-a-half. Germany has three times more than we do.”

Dr Jarvis said that until about 2009-10 NHS waiting times were improving. Waiting lists had now been going up for the past 13 or 14 years.

So far as the Ellen Badger Hospital in Shipston was concerned, Dr Jarvis said SWFT had said the building would be rebuilt and refurbished, “but nobody can conceive of anything being a hospital without any beds”. She added: “And the way it’s happened is underhand.”

The half dozen or so residents of Low Furlong Care Home who joined the demonstration had mixed reasons for doing so.

Kayleigh Jacewicz, the finance administrator at the home, told the Herald: “One lady was a nurse there for many years. Another was born there. And the other people have been residents of Shipston and one gentleman ran a bookie’s in Shipston. They all had a personal reason and a sense of community towards Shipston.”

Ms Jacewicz was the official at the home who sanctioned the residents taking part in the protest. Members of staff willingly pushed their wheelchairs.

Around 100 of the campaigners wore paper badger masks as a way of highlighting the focus of their demonstration, but these got soaked by the rain.

Stratford district councillor Dave Passingham (Green, Shipston South) told the Herald afterwards: “It was a good crowd, which is amazing because it was a wet Saturday morning and a lot of people will have been on holiday.”

“The good turnout shows the passion people have for the Ellen Badger Hospital, and the need they feel there is for a local community hospital.”

Cllr Manuela Perteghella, the Liberal Democrat parliamentary candidate for Stratford, took part in the march from the White Bear to the Ellen Badger site and back again. She said: “It was great to see such a strong community spirit in Shipston, with a huge turnout to the march in protest at the recommendation to relocate the local in-patient beds to Leamington.”

One of the organisers of the protest, Alasdair Elliott, told the Herald: “From my point of view, SWFT say that the move will bring ‘a range of benefits’. The question is: Who to, and what exactly are they?”

A spokeswoman for SWFT responded: “One of our key principles as a trust is to deliver care as close to our communities as possible and, despite the fact that we already provide more community hospital beds than most local health systems, we are recommending an increase in community hospital bed capacity in south Warwickshire.

“We know that some members of the community are concerned that our recommendations could increase demand on our acute site, but the use of community hospital beds does not negate the need for people to access acute hospital beds.

“The purpose for the community hospital beds is to provide additional support for patients leaving the acute hospital that might need it and through our recommendations there are more beds dedicated for this.

“We also offer on-going support for patients in their homes or specially commissioned local care homes, increasing the beds available for step down care and providing care even closer to home.”

The spokesperson added: “The recommendation to relocate the beds to Leamington Spa Hospital would mean that the ward is co-located with other in-patient services. The beds are available for the entire population of south Warwickshire and therefore it provides a range of benefits for many communities.

“These benefits include more clinical cover and access to dedicated therapy areas which help promote rehabilitation, recovery and independence, which will support better outcomes for patients.”

“We also know through analysis of previous patient data that the majority of patients were having to travel significant distances for the in-patient facilities in Shipston and Stratford.

“With both units located in the Stratford district of south Warwickshire, there were inequities for the population located centrally and further north of the county.

“Leamington Spa Hospital is centrally located and closer to a much higher proportion of the users of community hospital inpatient services.”

There is also some doubt about whether Shipston Medical Centre will form part of the healthcare facilities on the Ellen Badger site. While there appears to be an appetite to make it happen, the GP surgery announced a year ago it could not afford the move as the costs had increased too much.

With that two-pronged approach the site would have seen GP services in one part of the building and some outpatient services in the other, with treatment rooms for physiotherapy, specialist nurses and other health professionals alongside Shipston Home Nursing.

There is also a question over charitable money given to SWFT by the League of Friends of Shipston Hospitals for the project. The group believes its funding of £635,000 was to help give Shipston a new hospital, including community beds. It has threatened to ask for its money back from SWFT.

Demolition of the hospital buildings involved in the project has been completed and building work is now under way and is expected to be completed by next summer.