Activists hoping judicial review result will stop hospital closures

At least a dozen Dorset healthcare activists travelled to the Royal Courts of Justice in London for Tuesday and Wednesday's judicial review against the clinical services review, or CSR, set to be put in place by the county clinical commissioning group. The result of the judicial review may not be known until the beginning of September.

Under the CSR, Poole Hospital would lose its accident and emergency and maternity departments, with more beds and staff at the respective departments at the Royal Bournemouth Hospital. But campaigners say this would leave many Dorset residents - especially those in Purbeck and North Dorset - at a dangerously lengthy distance from emergency treatment.

The CSR will also see beds at community hospitals in Wareham and on Portland closed, with greater use of care-at-home expected to replace them.

But leading campaigner Debby Monkhouse, of Defend Dorset NHS, cast doubt on the likelihood of this happening, pointing out that the reason given by the chief executive of the trust that runs the hospitals had blamed staff shortages for the closures.

Campaign: Debby Monkhouse (right) with other campaigners outside the Royal Courts of Justice

"For community services to work, you have to ensure we have the staff," she stressed.

Ms Monkhouse noted that the whole health service was underfunded, but that the CCG should in that case be fighting for more money from central government.

The judicial review brought by the group contained a number of points, but hinged on what the group claims to be the risk to life posed by the CSR.

"The question wasn't whether the decisions taken by the CCG were poor, That is a matter for the health scrutiny committee," said Ms Monkhouse, who works as a clinical therapist. "The question was whether they had the right information before they made the decision."

She pointed as an example to a report from the Southwest Ambulance Trust on potential clinical risk, which she said used a uselessly small pool of samples.

Meanwhile, county councillor Nick Ireland, who sits on the Health Scrutiny Committee, said he was worried the CSR would adversely affect the committee's duty to safeguard the health of Dorset's residents.

Safeguarding fears: County councillor Nick Ireland

"The judicial review challenges Dorset CCG on several points," Cllr Ireland told the Echo.

"The most important of these are that [the CCG] failed to properly assess the clinical risk resulting from longer journey times and also, in proposing to drastically reduce the number of acute and community beds, failed to meet the statutory duty to ensure that, before any beds are closed, replacement staffed services are in place."

The CCG said in a statement it was pleased that the judicial review had taken place and that the judge had had the opportunity to hear the arguments from both sides.

"The earliest we would expect a decision would be the end of the month, [though it] may not be known until later this year," the statement read.

"During this time, we will not be making a statement on the judicial review and any third-party comments that appear either in the media or social media should be considered as speculation."