There is really no other topic for today than the announcement that we’re moving out of Accrington Victoria Community Hospital.
I want to acknowledge that sharing this information yesterday was incredibly sad and, truth be known, I haven’t moved much further forward mentally now.
I know how people feel about the building and strength and power of the legend that is ‘Accy Vic’ and this next step isn’t something we are doing lightly or without huge amounts of thought and respect.
For this reason, we broke the news to teams based in the hospital first yesterday morning and as a priority, which felt like the right thing to do. I then headed over and spent most of the day walking around the building and speaking to people about how they were feeling about it.
I want to pay testament to the way everyone engaged in the conversation, whether they were happy to be relocating or upset at the thought of leaving. Lots of people who work in Accy Vic live locally and love the place, even in its current crumbling state. That is the depth of history and emotion that surrounds the hospital.
The first colleagues I met on the corridor as I walked in via the entrance close to the X-Ray department demonstrated the spectrum of feelings which encapsulated the day.
One person greeted me with a smile and was really open, with feedback that they were happy about the move to somewhere that represented an improved environment to them.
The next two colleagues spotted me as they rounded the corner and initially turned back, not wanting to speak, before deciding they would turn around again and come and chat to me after all.
I am grateful to them for their bravery and candour. They realised we couldn’t carry on working or seeing patients there, but it didn’t stop them feeling desperately emotional to be leaving after 20 years in a building that is a big part of their life, the relationship beginning with a tonsillectomy at age four.
Throughout the day, colleagues shared more personal stories about their experience of Accrington Victoria. Some were work related, some were more personal including everything from babies being born on site to parents nursed at the end of their lives there too.
It’s clear these are the feelings, the memories and the emotional ties that bind us to inanimate objects such as buildings. It makes us human and, moreover, in a health care setting, it is the reason we care.
During my time in East Lancashire I have regularly visited the hospital and worked with colleagues there and I know it is a much-loved, if not iconic part of the community, with a history that is as rich and impressive as it is fascinating.
Owned and paid for by local people, Accrington Victoria was built in 1894 – long before the NHS was conceived – through donations, personal subscriptions and grand community events. Some of these remain today, such as the famous Accrington Carnival, which started life as a fund raiser for a nurses and doctors home on site.
But while the legend of the hospital never weakens, the truth is that its physical state has declined beyond repair. It is 130 years old, after all, and I was reminded yesterday that even if we had the £8million needed to bring it back into a functional state as it is, that would still be some distance away from the standard of accommodation for health care services that we see today.
If you climb the myriad network of rickety staircases and corridors, you’ll find colleagues working in the rafters in awkward attic spaces, ceilings collapsed, props and buckets collecting water on the floor. A decrepit heating system should function with three boilers, but two have packed in. Some offices were way too hot, whilst others are freezing cold.
Just to replace the system would be £1million – and that’s before you wrestle with removing and replacing it in a building full of asbestos.
In one corridor, I was introduced to the concept of a ‘pig’ device which captures leaks from the roof via a medieval looking contraption into a receptacle on the floor and nearby colleagues told me how they have tubs on their desk to catch water when it rains. Colleagues talked about the worry of working alone at times and feel anxious that the ceiling would fall onto their heads and no one would know.
As accountable officer for health and safety, I simply can’t allow us to continue to work in these conditions and as much as we all feel enormous love for Accrington Victoria and the sadness and pain of moving out is real, it is time.
My wish is that by being honest and managing it in a planned and organised way we can avoid an emergency scenario that causes huge disruption for colleagues and patients – and this brings me to some clear commitments we have made in relocating services out of the hospital.
The first commitment I have made is that four critical services and as many clinical services as possible will move to nearby facilities within about a mile, to ensure the community retains easy access to them and minimise disruption to our teams.
The key four are the Minor Injuries Unit (MIU), X-Ray, Outpatients and GP services delivered by PWE Healthcare. These will not be reduced or diminished in anyway. They will be provided by the same people, in the same way – just a short distance away.
There are plans to do this, but we need to now listen to each team and all partners across Accrington, Hyndburn and Lancashire and South Cumbria as a whole to ensure all the moving parts continue to operate effectively for everyone.
For now, if you have an appointment at Accrington Victoria please continue to attend as normal until you are advised of alternative arrangements. If you want to track progress on plans or double check anything, please click here where all the latest updates for colleagues and patients will be added in real time.
The second commitment is this: once this initial phase of the programme is complete, we want local people to be a big part of deciding what will happen next and how the hospital site can be protected and regenerated for years to come.
The Trust is committed to this and we have some ideas too that include retaining the historical facades and the character of Accrington Victoria, but perhaps creating accessible housing for local people, a health hub including a GP service and other community facilities on the site.
Our aim is to retain and enhance the building with partners who can attract investment from different pots of money to the NHS and bring it back into use for local people. It will not be sold off or bulldozed to the ground, but reinvented with its character and history intact and alive.
This is similar to the Dovestones Gardens facility we recently created in Burnley with Burnley Council and social enterprise organisation Calico, which has been hugely successful and changed the lives of people there for the better.
In the meantime, the Trust will move out but in doing so we want to capture everything about Accrington Victoria that we can – the memories, the life moments, the history and its monumental contribution to Accy life, not just as a hospital but as a friend, an icon and a force to be reckoned with, through some of the area’s toughest times.
It is an undeniably sad moment for the Trust, but I for one believe in the strength of the legend and I have no doubt Accy Vic will go on to something new and improved and continue to serve the town for many, many years to come.
Martin