PROTESTERS OUT TO SAVE MEADOWS Campaign to stop new £180m cancer hospital
HUNDREDS of people joined a protest against the building of a new £180m cancer hospital in Cardiff yesterday. The new Velindre cancer hospital is planned for meadowland known as the Northern Meadows between the old Whitchurch Hospital and Asda at Coryton.
The facility is set to replace the current 60-year-old Velindre Cancer Centre.
Though the plans were approved by Cardiff council in 2018, many residents from the campaign group Save the Northern Meadows say the plans will cause “irreversible damage” to a beautiful area.
But many are also in favour of the scheme, which supporters believe is desperately needed to accommodate a growing number of cancer patients in Wales.
The new facility would be twice as big as the current hospital, with a capacity for 8,500 new patients and 160,000 patient appointments a year.
The Save the Northern Meadows campaign group insists it will damage wildlife, cause traffic problems and lead to a loss of green space.
Yesterday’s protest, called Stand Up for the Meadows, saw around 300 protesters observing social distancing and many wore face masks.
It comes after developers adjusted plans for the new hospital following a petition that attracted 8,000 signatures.
Applications have been submitted to Cardiff council to revise access roads for the building of the new Velindre Cancer Centre. The submitted plans cover new road and car parking layouts at the Asda store in Coryton, where the main access to the new Velindre Cancer Centre would be.
Velindre University NHS Trust is also seeking to extend the period when the temporary construction road on the Whitchurch Hospital site can be used. The plan would have that in place until November 2024.
The hospital trust says this extension would save between £5m and £11.5m, and mean the hospital could open in 2024 rather than 2025.
But resident Tessa Marshall, who is part of an action group campaigning about where the hospital is planned to be built, said: “We feel that spending £30m on building ill-conceived access bridges and roads to a landlocked site through a nature reserve is extortionate and is fundamentally against the principles of the Future Generations Act. This money should be spent on patient care or new hospital equipment.
“They cannot have consulted local residents effectively, as their inperson consultation period was cut in half by the lockdown.”
Project director of the new hospital David Powell said: “We have listened carefully to the many comments and opinions expressed during the preplanning public notification period and we’ve improved our proposals as a result.”