New hospital consultation has been deeply flawed

Now that the Monklands refurbishment or replacement project consultation has closed, I sincerely hope that the NHS Lanarkshire board will pay heed to the wishes of the local people and override the option appraisal which placed Gartcosh as the preferred option.

As Alex Neil MSP and I have stated in our joint 20-page submission to the board: “Any fair-minded person can only conclude that the exercise carried out by NHS Lanarkshire to assess which site the new Monklands Hospital should be built on has been deeply, deeply flawed.”

The submission sets out in detail exactly what we have found wrong with the process, from the option appraisal to the public consultation events.

The scoring process appears to have broken many of the rules set by the Scottish Government and Scottish Health Council, meaning that the result lacks credibility and cannot be allowed to proceed.

Using estimated travel times and groundworks costs, omitting details regarding the pan-Lanarkshire orbital road, exaggerating details regarding the gas main at Glenmavis and playing down cost and implications of the culvert at Gartcosh, NHS Lanarkshire have painted an extremely skewed picture of the sites available.

The travel times were based on data from a seven-yearold census and when Google Maps were used to find more up-to-date travel times they showed that from Chapelhall to Glenmavis is seven minutes, but to Gartcosh it is 16 minutes.

Carnbroe to Glenmavis is nine minutes but to Gartcosh is 14 – quite a difference if you have a sick child in your car.

The groundwork costs have, by NHS Lanarkshire’s own admission, been based on a purely paper exercise. No site visits were done, nor testing of the land at either of the two locations.

It is shocking that such an intrinsic part of the appraisal should be left to guesswork and it does not bode well for the rest of the project if this important issue can be treated with such contempt.

North Lanarkshire Council has already stated that it is seeking to have the panLanarkshire orbital road as a dual carriageway.

This road will be completed before the new hospital is finished, meaning that any snagging will have been resolved before hospital traffic starts to use it.

As the site at Glenmavis will be 40 acres from a plot of 341 acres, there should be no need for any part of the facility to be built on top of the gas main.

Indeed, it was stated at the Shotts public meeting that the gas main was not an issue. Why then was it put as a negative in the consultation document? What was the scoring team told about the gas main?

With the purchase cost of Gartcosh being estimated at £8 million and Glenmavis being offered for 1p, what sense does it make to spend millions of pounds on a purchase that could be better spent on the hospital itself?

Anyone who wishes to read the joint submission is more than welcome to contact my office and I will happily send out a copy.

The petition that Mr Neil and I started has had more than 6000 signatures and this was handed in to NHS Lanarkshire prior to the end of the consultation process.

While we now wait for the board to make their decision in November, Mr Neil and I want to see an urgent independent review take place before that board meeting.

We will continue working hard to fight to keep the hospital in central Monklands, not at the fringes of the NHS Lanarkshire boundary.

The submission sets out in detail exactly what we have found wrong with the process

On a mission Mr Gray and Airdrie MSP Alex Neil with their petition, which attracted 6000 signatures