Ralph Michell, Director of Strategy and Sijo Francis, Consultant Neonatologist and Divisional Chair for Children’s, Women’s, Diagnostics, Therapies, Outpatients, Pharmacy, Critical Care gave an update on changes made by NHS England on Paediatric Cancer Services.

St Georges and the Royal Marsden had one centre which provided specialist treatment for South London, Kent, Surrey and Sussex.

The challenge of having two hospitals was that when a child became very sick they had to be transferred to St Georges, which clinicians strongly felt was not the right set up and would benefit from all services being in one site. For that reason, NHS England decided that the service should move to St Georges or Evelina in central London. This decision would shortly go to public consultation due to the impact on children and families as well as St Georges and the Royal Marsden.

For the last 25 years, St Georges provided children’s cancer services for the more complex patients of both St Georges and the Royal Marsden. Such services were a significant component for the services developed for specialised care.

As Oncology formed a significant component of their workload, St Georges were concerned that if the children’s cancer service was move from St Georges, the specialist services would also have to move. This would have a detrimental impact on them being able to provide such services in the future and impact children within their regions.

The expertise developed at St Georges was an important factor for the quality of care provided. St Georges proposed the only model where paediatric neurosurgery and oncology surgery would be provided by specialist’s on site, other options would have a reduced ability to provide such services due to the lack of paediatric specialties.

St Georges developed a working relationship with the Royal Marsden and although the Royal Marsden could not host a children’s principal treatment centre, they had developed both clinical and research expertise in children’s cancer. Based on this and the location of both sites, they believed retaining the services at St Georges provided the greatest opportunity for the relationships built to be maintained and the research carried out at the Royal Marsden to continue.

The strong estates plan developed was considered deliverable within the required timeframe and financial constraints, which positively impacted children with cancer and improved the overall estate and care provided.

NHS England attended the Southwest London and Surrey Joint Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee to present their plans for consultation. This required further work to ensure that the public was given a full picture to be able to make an informed choice. The consultation period should start in September for a period of 12 weeks before a final decision was made in the winter.

In response to questions, the following was stated:

·         The consultation was originally planned to take place over the summer but NHS England felt that it would be better to take more time and start the consultation in September.

·         The chair of the Health and Wellbeing Board agreed to write a letter to express the views of local residents.

RESOLVED: That the Board noted the report.