At a meeting of Bromley Council’s Development Control Committee in January, Councillors voted to allow planning permission for a new Endoscopy Unit at the Princess Royal University (PRU) hospital. I was attended this meeting covering for a colleague and voted in favour of the development.
The new unit will help to reduce wait times for local cancer patients, speed up diagnostic time and improve the patient experience, while also offering training opportunities in the area. Some of the improvements the new unit will offer include:
·A 5% increase in the number of endoscopies each year; about 2000 extra procedures a year
·Improve training opportunities: with a new training centre in the new unit and will be part of London Endoscopy Training Academy
·Improve patient experience; reduce waiting times, avoids travel to central London for many of the procedures which will be done locally, inclusion of a room for breaking bad news so patients coming in are not seeing other patients distressed, as well as separate male and female recovery spaces to improve patient dignity.
·More therapeutic interventions to be undertaken; a new unit to provide therapeutic procedures safely and offer twice as much capacity at the PRU.
The new unit will be funded by a £20million investment from the Government. The construction is expected to take around 14 months to complete.
Planning Officers at the Council accepted the need for this unit but were not satisfied with the planning application so the recommendation from officers was to approve. There was a near 2-hour debate around this, including presentations from Kings College Foundation Trust, a representative from residents who objected and the Chairman of the Health & Wellbeing Board. The Trust claimed that due timeframe constraints on the funding that rejecting the proposals would mean a new proposal could not be submitted so no new unit would be built.
In the end I decided that the need for this unit outweighed the issues with the planning application so voted in favour.