Call For Top Inquiry

It follows news that the cost of extending and refurbishing Zachary Merton Hospital at Rustington could be almost three times higher than original estimates from less than two years ago.

The revised costs, revealed in the Littlehampton Gazette last month, were slammed as "wholly disgraceful" and "a bombshell" at Thursday's meeting of Littlehampton Town Council, when deep concern was also expressed over the future of Littlehampton Hospital.

Former mayor Rosemary Orpin, a leading campaigner to safeguard Littlehampton Hospital's future, said the town council would rightly come in for criticism from its electors and from auditors if its finances were managed in the same way as the hospital project costs.

Mrs Orpin was the only member of a project group working on the hospitals' scheme to vote against the chosen option of having all the area's inpatient beds at an improved and extended 60-bed Zachary Merton Hospital, with Littlehampton converted to a health and social services "resource centre".

Initial estimates for the work at Zachary Merton were 3.8m, but the latest figures showed a new cost of 10.3m.

Said Mrs Orpin: "At the project group, I frequently questioned the figures and was told that the officers knew best."

She was extremely concerned that the impact of the much higher costs would end up being detrimental to Littlehampton Hospital.

Town mayor Mark Butler shared Mrs Orpin's misgivings. A week earlier he had attended a community hospitals liaison meeting with officials involved in the scheme.

"I kept asking again and again and again what was happening about Littlehampton Hospital. Zachary Merton was mentioned, but not Littlehampton. I got no clear steer on that whatsoever."

Town councillor and Rustington GP Dr James Walsh, who also sat on the hospitals project group, described the spiralling cost as "a bombshell".

His and other group members' support of the Zachary Merton option had been 100 per cent dependent on the estimated costs being viable and on the scheme being deliverable within two to three years.

"It was made quite clear that if they reneged on that agreement, our support would be withdrawn. I will write and call either for a reconvening of the group, or I will withdraw my support.

"I accept inflation will add to the total. But these figures are not inflationary, they are wholly disgraceful increases. How can it go from 3m-odd to 10m? It's an extraordinary escalation.

"I am questioning the competence of the officers who produced the original figures and have now revisited them."

Dr Walsh said the transfer of responsibility for the project from the former West Sussex Health Authority and Worthing Priority Care Trust to the new Adur, Arun and Worthing Primary Care Trust should not be allowed to "cloak" the matter from further examination and further public gaze.

The town council unanimously backed a suggestion by councillor Tony Squires to write to health ministers asking for an investigation into the community hospitals finance issue.

Steve Phoenix, chief executive of the new primary care trust, has ordered a "rapid review" of the scheme, to be ready for the new trust's board by the end of June.