London NHS hospital trusts in row over £190m rebuilding scheme

theguardian.com:

An extraordinary row has broken out between two NHS hospital trusts, with one accusing the other of endangering the safety of seriously ill patients through a £190m development scheme.

University College London hospital (UCLH) claims Great Ormond Street (GOSH) children’s hospital’s rebuilding of its ageing site will lead to patients being denied time-critical care because they will become stuck in ambulances trapped in construction site traffic.

The dispute has pitted against each other two trusts that are near-neighbours in the historic Bloomsbury district of central London, and which have long had a close working relationship.

UCLH has lodged a strongly worded objection to GOSH’s plan to demolish part of its site in central London, which dates back to 1852, and build an eight-storey, state-of-the-art replacement facility.

This would include a new specialist centre for treating children and young people with cancer. UCLH claims the scheme poses a risk, both to adults being taken to its National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery (NHNN) for urgent brain surgery and also children being cared for at GOSH.

Its main concern centres on GOSH’s plan to start using Powis Place, a short private street owned jointly by the two trusts, as its new temporary main entrance during the three-year building phase.

UCLH fears that ambulances rushing to unload patients there will get snarled up in nearby streets congested with 30-tonne lorries servicing the building site, and could endanger under-18s arriving at GOSH because Powis Place would be too crowded.

It has sent a two-page letter of objection submitted to the London borough of Camden, the planning authority from which GOSH is seeking permission to proceed with its plan. In it, UCLH