High Speed Rail and Buckinghamshire Hospitals

The decision a few years back to concentrate particular hospital services in either Stoke Mandeville or Wycombe, rather than at both sites, stirred up a huge row. In Aylesbury, we saw cardiac services go south. At Wycombe, which is the local hospital for a lot of my constituents in Stokenchurch, Naphill and other villages, maternity and children’s services were closed and concentrated at Stoke.

An awful lot hangs on having an effective ambulance service to get patients from one end of the county to a hospital at the other. Living in Risborough, I see and hear those ambulances a lot.

So what is going to happen if this rail route goes ahead and involves a viaduct across the A4010 at Stoke Mandeville? Is it really possible to do it without temporary road closures or, at the very best, traffic restrictions that are bound to add significantly to delays. I’ve been onto the Bucks Hospitals Trust today to flag this up as an issue. It’s just the latest illustration of the far-reaching impact that this scheme could have on  many aspects of life here.