HEALTH bosses behind the long-overdue plan to replace Maldon's ageing St Peter's Hospital were slated by town leaders for dragging their heels over the project.
Tempers flared at the district council overview and scrutiny meeting on Wednesday when representatives from Mid Essex Hospitals Trust (MEHT), Mid Essex Clinical Commissioning Group (MECGG) and Provide got a dressing down by councillors.
Mid Essex Hospitals Trust chief executive Paul Forden, Provide chief executive John Niland, Mid Essex Clinical Commissioning Group's accountable officer Caroline Rassell and the organisation's interim chairman Dr Bryan Spencer all fell silent when asked why the project had stalled again.
Cllr Richard Derwick, Conservative member for Tillingham, said: "If this was my business then I would walk away because there is no one here I could do business with."
A plan to replace St Peter's Hospital has been more than 10 years in the making and despite many failed attempts, council chiefs finally believed they were making progress.
During the heated meeting councillors expressed their support for a hospital, 320 new homes, a new food store, shops, a care home and office space at Maldon Hall Farm, off Spital Road, put forward by developer Kensington & Edinburgh Estates.
The council is worried some elderly residents of the Dengie are forced to travel up to 60 miles to visit Broomfield Hospital in Chelmsford for services that it says could be provided by a new centre.
They are also concerned about the state of St Peter's, which was built in 1873 as a workhouse, and described as "not fit for purpose" by John Niland.
Cllr Adrian Fluker was met with a wall of silence when he asked health bosses: "The provision for a new facility concerns me enormously. We live in a very peninsula base area and all the people are very confused. Are you on board or not?"
In an outburst, Conservative member for Maldon East Cllr Stephen Savage said: "You are like four Sir Humphrey Applebys. I just want to bang your heads together.
"I feel like you need to be locked in a room together and not let out until this is all sorted out."
Cllr Mark Durham, a Conservative member for Wickham Bishops and Woodham, added: "I thought we had a national health service but we don't. It's disjointed. We have a lot of groups all pulling in different directions.
"It should be so straight forward to get a solution."
Responding to questions about the feasibility of a new centre, the MECCG's Caroline Russell said she could not guarantee any new contracts to provide care from the new building, especially as the organisation must find more than £40 million of savings in the next five years.
But John Niland, chief executive of Provide, a staff-owned community interest company providing NHS services to more than 370,000 people in mid Essex, remained positive about securing the services he currently gives at St Peter's at a new site.
"The St Peter's site is untenable, clearly we would like to continue providing the services that we do.
"We would be delighted to unlock the doors and open the facility.
"We would take a risk, I'm prepared to say that this is quite a minimal risk but we haven't got a problem with that."
A full business plan is unlikely to be completed before July 2015, after which the scheme could go into the NHS project pipeline.
The representatives from each body have agreed to return in September after the MECCG has submitted a financial report to the secretary of state.
For more on that story turn to page 12.
