Campaign for Littlehampton hospital will be taken to the very top

Campaigners calling for the town’s long-promised hospital to be built will take their cause to Downing Street on December 5, where they will present almost 8,000 protest letters to Number 10. Gillian Brown, leader of Arun District Council, said: “The support for our campaign has been overwhelming. Littlehampton not only wants its hospital but it desperately needs it. “Being able to present so many thousands of signatures to Downing Street demonstrates in the clearest way we know how the level of feeling is in this town.” Mrs Brown, who will be joined on her trip by mayor of Littlehampton Alan Gammon and resident Bob McDowall, who has single-handedly collected thousands of letters, will write a personal letter to Prime Minister, David Cameron, asking him to find out from health bosses why the town is still waiting. Littlehampton’s old hospital was demolished in 2005 after planning permission was granted for a new 20-bed facility, including treatment rooms offering chiropody, speech and language therapy and physiotherapy, as well as rehabilitation services and x-rays, on the site. Building work was due to start in 2006 but was delayed after the health trust said it had budget problems. In 2008, health bosses said “the time was right” to build the new hospital and that it would be up and running by 2010, but this has never happened. A spokeswoman for Arun, which has spearheaded the campaign, with Littlehampton Town Council and the Littlehampton Gazette, said: “Investigations by campaigners in the summer revealed that more than £400,000 has already been spent on the project by health bosses who have commissioned business cases and tendering exercises, despite a brick never having been laid at the Fitzalan Road site. “It has also emerged that Guildhouse Consortium, which won the competition to build the new hospital in 2005, is suing the NHS for £9m for breach of contract after the project was pulled just weeks before it was due to start.” Four days before the trip to Downing Street, Mrs Brown will attend the public meeting of the NHS Sussex Board in Lewes, where she plans to use a public question time session to ask for assurances the outcome of the impending court case would not affect the board’s decision to commission the hospital. Campaigners will leave the Civic Centre in Littlehampton at 8am on Monday, December 5, to take the protest letters to London. To sign a letter to be added to the total, go to www.arun.gov.uk/giveusourhospital or call in at Arun Civic Centre, Maltravers Road, Littlehampton, or fill out the version on this page, left.