Sutton Guardian, London Tonight and the Daily Telegraph have made the link between Remembrance Sunday and the sale of the Carshalton War Memorial land for housing. Another terrific turnout at the War Memorial by the ponds where locals, joined by the Civic party comprising of the Mayor, MPs, councillors an dcouncil officers, showed the lasting respect that Carshalton residents have for those who sacrificed their lives for our freedom. The Hospital is a lasting legacy left by those who paid for it to be built for the treatment of local people and especially those who had returned from the frontline.

For people in the area now, the depth of feeling lasts longer than a single weekend. Selling off the family silver means that this site will never be able to be used for healthcare again. So many plots of land have gone the same way. How can we cope with ever-changing theories and fashions in healthcare? It operated on the same basis as a cottage hospital. These were largely closed over many years but are starting to make a comeback. Unfortunately for Sutton residents, they are mainly coming back in Merton thanks to a lot of postage stamps bought by the local MP using taxpayers’ money. The Telegraph reports that the NHS changed their mind on Intermediate Care because they would treat people in their homes. This skips over the fact that they have a 53 page report on their website explaining how they are going to site the Intermediate care that was considered for Carshalton, in Wilsons Hospital. This is a building that I have been blissfully unaware of the existence of for the near quarter of a century that I have lived in Carshalton.

Looking back, I first posted about the hospital two years ago. At that time it was out of frustration after waiting eight months to get an answer as to what was happening on the site. It took a further twenty four months to get that answer. If a single piece of correspondence takes that long, I wonder how long the proposed changes in local healthcare take to implement.