Council and campaigners keep up pressure on Hunt over hospital downgrade

The Mayor of Lewisham will next week recommend to full council that officers should be authorised to seek a judicial review of Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt’s decision to downgrade Lewisham Hospital.

Sir Steve Bullock also agreed at a Cabinet meeting on Wednesday to put the case for judicial review proceedings against the recommendations made by Matthew Kershaw, Trust Special Administrator of South London Healthcare Trust. It was Kershaw's proposals that led to the downgrading of the hospital’s maternity and accident and emergency services.

The proposed legal proceedings are subject to any responses from Hunt and Kershaw to pre-action letters sent by the council.

The Mayor has also endorsed the setting up of a legal challenge fund to help offset the costs of any action. In the event that donations are not required, the monies will go to local charity Children First Lewisham.

The full council at Lewisham will consider the recommendations at its meeting on 27 February.

Lawyers for the Save Lewisham Hospital Campaign have also sent a letter before action to the Health Secretary over the plans.

Leigh Day & Co argued that Hunt had exceeded his powers. The firm also said that:

• The decision-making powers of the Secretary of State did not exceed those of the individual Trust as it was subject to the special administration process.
• The Secretary of State had breached his own rules regarding the reconfiguration of NHS services.
• Even if he did have the general power to make decisions concerning reconfiguration of services at Lewisham Hospital, he had acted unlawfully “as he failed to follow his own rules on reconfiguration when taking this decision”.

Richard Stein, a partner at Leigh Day, said: “The demoralisation of staff and confusion caused to the public and patients at Lewisham Hospital by the Secretary of State’s decision must be dealt with urgently. We have given Mr Hunt until the end of this month to reverse his decision, before taking further action to ensure that the healthcare needs of Lewisham remain catered for and that lives are not lost through a lack of services.

“The reconfiguration of health services in South East London is a matter for the local NHS bodies to resolve for as long as those local NHS commissioners and providers retain the power given by the Secretary of State to make these decisions. The Secretary of State should not have assumed the power to make decisions which he had both promised not to make and had no power to make.”