Tory leader joins fight to rescue hospital plan (From Cotswold Journal)

Tory leader joins fight to rescue hospital plan

2:19pm Thursday 18th January 2007

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TORY leader David Cameron is throwing his weight behind moves to save Chipping Norton's proposed new hospital and care home.

Mr Cameron, who is the town's MP, will chair a meeting with all interested parties on February 16. It follows news from Revenue and Customs that the project is subject to VAT and will carry a huge tax bill.

The meeting will include representatives from Oxfordshire County Council, West Oxfordshire District Council, the strategic health authority, Oxfordshire Primary Care Trust, the Order of St John, which will be responsible for the care home, and Revenue and Customs.

Mr Cameron said: "It's an opportunity for everyone to get around the table and thrash out the financial issues involved.

"It would be a tragedy if the new hospital, care home and GP surgery, which people have been working and hoping for over the past few years, was allowed to fall away."

Chipping Norton Town Council is holding an emergency meeting on Monday to discuss the crisis. Mayor and council chairman Gina Burrows said: "The issue is of immense importance to the community and to us as elected representatives."

Canon Stephen Weston, of St Mary's in Chipping Norton, who is chairman of the current hospital users' group, has made an impassioned appeal to Oxfordshire County Council to keep faith with the new hospital.

The county council, a major funding partner in the project, has set a deadline of March 31 for the financial issues threatening the plan to be sorted out.

There are fears that the VAT bill will render the whole project uneconomic.

The plan for the combined hospital and care home is one of the first of its kind in the country. It comes as a result of the Government encouraging health authorities to work with outside partners on major projects.

The decision thrashed out will be critical to future NHS plans.

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