We, the undersigned residents and users of the National Health Service, are alarmed at the threat to the world-renowned Royal Brompton Hospital centred on Fulham Road, Chelsea.

 The NHS Executive has decided to stop commissioning children’s heart services from the Royal Brompton, despite acknowledging its history of providing safe and exceptional care in this area. The hospital has now given up on retaining the Fulham Road site and is planning to transfer all of its services to a site at St Thomas Hospital, funded by selling off its very valuable site. We believe this to be a retrograde step which will seriously damage the excellent services for which the Brompton is well known.

Two trusts - Imperial Healthcare (which runs St Mary’s, Charing Cross and Hammersmith hospitals), and the Chelsea and Westminster - are pursuing an alternative plan. This aims to keep all Brompton services in North West London, but would split them over several sites.

Either plan would begin to unravel the integrated and highly successful medical facilities now available along the Fulham Road and end any prospect of retaining a world leading science/health hub in Chelsea.  The current arrangements work well, are not broken and do not need ‘fixing’. What is happening is motivated by land values and asset stripping, not by good medicine.

We believe that the health needs of the public are best served by the Royal Brompton staying where it is. We therefore: a) call on the leadership of Kensington and Chelsea Council to resist vigorously  any application for a change of use of the Fulham Road site; b) to press the NHS Executive to restore commissioning of children’s heart services at the Brompton, and c) to lobby the Secretary of State for Health to provide leadership in requiring the retention of integrated NHS Hospital services in the area which in turn requires the funding to upgrade the Brompton buildings to modern standards.