Creating risks to the environment and to health: residents concerns about the Hospital planning application
When BCP Council Planning Committee consider the Royal Bournemouth Hospital Planning Application, we ask the Committee to consider:
• Hundreds of thousands of extra, and longer, journeys, causing risk to life and making congestion in the conurbation even worse
• Increased carbon emissions affecting health and the environment despite BCP's climate emergency declaration and pledge to move to carbon neutrality
• Loss of the promised spur road to improve access to the hospital
UNLESS the Committee is satisfied that:
1) Agreeing the Hospital planning application will NOT cause hundreds of thousands of extra journeys across the chronically congested conurbation
2) Plans to relocate A&E, Maternity and paediatrics at RBH are safe
3) Plans to reduce the number of A&E and Maternity locations and to increase the level of emergency service delivery at RBH to meet the needs of 750,000 people are "appropriate and achievable" without the spur road
Residents ask the Committee to REJECT the application.
Why is this important?
1) There will be serious impact on the environment, on people’s health, and on people’s lives, due to the at least 250,000 extra journeys across the conurbation caused by the changing roles of the hospitals. The conurbation is already the third worst place for gridlock in the UK, and BCP Council has committed to carbon neutrality by 2030. These plans will actually move this target further away.
2) Peoples lives will be put at risk. This is NOT in the "public interest". The application to move A&E services to RBH means up to 39,000 emergency admissions from the West will face longer travel times, beyond the CCG’s ‘maximum acceptable’ guidelines of 30-45 minutes, due to loss of A&E, Maternity and Paediatric care at Poole.
Dorset Clinical Commissioning Group calculated for the High Court that 400 ambulance patients per year would be put at additional clinical risk. This does not include the risk to maternity, paediatric and adult emergencies who do not arrive at hospital by ambulance. Dorset CCG state that longer travel time in labour, birth and child emergency is a ‘significant risk’, and no credible risk assessment of the plans has been carried out.
3) Royal Bournemouth Hospital is not sustainable as the sole emergency hospital for the conurbation. RBH currently define their A&E catchment population as 550,000, this does not include Poole, Purbeck or housing developments: it will be 750,000. There are no longer plans for a new spur road giving direct access to RBH from the A338. Joint Health Scrutiny, in August 2017, noted the plans to expand RBH relied on the new road, and recommended that: “the CCG ensure that plans to increase the level of service delivery at RBH would still be appropriate and achievable, should the spur road not progress.”
