Islington residents only have three days left to have their voice heard about plans to close The Whittington Hospital’s maternity unit.
The public consultation on the fate of the Archway hospital, and other proposed changes to services for newborn babies and pregnant people locally, will close at 11:59pm on Saturday 17 March, having been open since 11 December 2023. This is despite calls from local MP Emily Thornberry and MP Catherine West that the unit must remain open, and an online petition against the closure that has attracted more than 1000 signatures.
“It is outrageous to be considering closing any maternity unit,” said local resident Zena Sullivan. “Conceptions will never cease and this would only cause hardships to those local to whichever is closed.”
Another local resident Anna Steadman also strongly opposes the closure of the unit. She said: “I spent eight days in hospital when my son was born five weeks early in January last year. The Whittington took such good care of us, and the fact that it’s our local hospital, as Archway residents, made such a difference.”
Whittington Hospital could be affected because the North Central London (NCL) Integrated Care Board (ICB) – the NHS body coordinating healthcare locally – and NHS England (London) “want to go from having maternity and neonatal services at five hospitals, to four”, as it was explained in an information video for the public about the so-called Start Well consultation.
Healthwatch Islington an independent consumer champion for healthcare explained that to make this happen, the NHS and the NCL ICB are suggesting that neonatal and maternity services at either Whittington Hospital or the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead are closed.
Ms West, MP for Hornsey and Wood Green said in a letter to Jo Sauvage, Chair of the NCL Start Well Programme Board that the proposed closure of the maternal unit would be “devastating for women in Hornsey & Wood Green, leaving them having to travel significantly further to access vital maternity care”.
Ms West stressed the importance of maintaining maternity provision, saying it is “fundamental to providing an integrated service for local women across all stages of their life”.
The NHS and NCL ICB information video explains the reason for this proposed change: “We think having four maternity and neonatal units will allow us to better match staff and resources with what people need and want.”
“It will also mean that staff in our neonatal units see enough babies to maintain their specialist skills, which in turn helps improve the quality of care we provide”, it continues.
The consultation, it explains, has been launched because “at the moment, our maternity and neonatal services do not always meet the needs of local people.”
“These needs have changed as birth rates decline, and more people need more complex care,” it continues. “There is a lot of variation”, also, “in how busy our units are, especially in neonatal care.”
Healthwatch Islington, explained the two other changes to NCL maternity and neonatal services that have been suggested.
The NCL ICB and the NHS want to “reorganis[e] surgical services for babies and young children and concentrat[e] these at University College Hospital and Great Ormond Street as North Central London’s centres of expertise, with surgery provision within local hospitals for older children”, Healthwatch explains.
The birth unit at Edgware Community Hospital would also be closed, Healthwatch Islington added. This is because, the NCL ICB and the NHS say in their video, that the Edgware unit “has seen fewer than 50 births a year over the last three years.”
The online Start Well consultation information page states that the NCL ICB and the NHS are using the consultation to find out what the public think “before [they] decide whether and how to take [the proposals] forward” and it adds, “No decisions have been made yet and we are consulting on our proposals with an open mind.”
There are concerns, however, that closing Whittington Hospital could have negative impacts on the local community.
At a council meeting on 29 February, Councillor Nurullah Turan, Executive Member for Health and Social Care at Islington Borough Council, said he “wholeheartedly support[s] the Whittington maternity and neonatal units staying open” because, firstly, “almost 900 women every year will need to go elsewhere for their maternity care” if Whittington’s maternity unit closes.
He added that “we cannot feel confident that other services would be able to see them all”, and even if they were, “many residents would need to navigate new systems and unfamiliar hospital sites, face language barriers, and additional transport costs.”
Mr Turan also explained, as Healthwatch Islington also notes, that “our residents most likely to be affected by closure are those at greatest risk of complications and poorer outcomes, including women living in some of the most deprived parts of our borough, and women from Black African (including Somali), and Black Caribbean communities.”
An online petition to protest the proposed closure of Whittington Hospital now has over 1000 signatures, Mr Turan says, and he is “urging everybody to please go on there, and make our voices heard.”
Daniel Bourke, a resident of Hornsey in North London, had all three of his daughters born at the Whittington between 2009 and 2013. He said: “The fact that the Whittington or the Royal Free for that matter might close their maternity units is beyond concerning. Anyone who has had to negotiate North London traffic while a labour is in progress will know how reassuring it is to have a unit relatively close by.” He added: “I can’t speak highly enough of the service provided by the staff there and I think it would be awful if that team weren’t there for future births.”
Islington South and Finsbury MP Emily Thornberry told Islington Now: “The Whittington maternity unit holds a special place in the heart of our community because so many have their own personal connection to it, having been born there, given birth there, or both.”
Thornberry hopes that NHS leaders hear “local voices loud and clear”, saying “that the unit must remain open, with improved, specialist neonatal services and more investment.”
“That’s absolutely the right option for Islington”, she continued, “and it’s what I will continue to campaign for to ensure that families have the very neonatal and maternity care right on our doorstep.”
The Whittington Hospital maternity unit is fundamentally important to so many local people, where they have created life-long memories.
“My daughter was born at the Whittington on Sat the 27th of Sep 2003 at 4.19 am,” said local resident Kirsty Marks. “I have a photo of my mother and brother about an hour later congratulating my partner in the waiting room at the Whittington. It is the happiest photo I have of my whole life.”
You can contribute to the consultation online using this form, or via the email and postal address, and telephone number, listed here.
News reporter for Islington Now and freelancer across other outlets. ENO Responder 23/24. Ex-Editor-in-Chief at The Tab Cambridge.