The boss of Epsom and St Helier hospitals says he "cannot see a scenario" where both sites would ever stop providing services.

But he admitted the trust was looking at whether their combined 800 beds should all be put onto one new hospital site.

In an exclusive interview with the Epsom Guardian, chief executive Daniel Elkeles said another NHS review - another successor to Better Services Better Value (BSBV) - will begin in the autumn.

He said the trust was looking at how it could make its hospitals more 'robust' to prevent them being in the firing line once more.

"Poor buildings" were the biggest challenge they faced, according to Mr Elkeles, promoting a review into its "long-term building strategy" for 2020 and beyond.

The trust was plunged into controversy last month when management consultants from Deloitte were overheard on a train discussing the option, as part of this review, of creating an 800-bed super hospital on the Sutton site.

Mr Elkeles, who lives in nearby Ashtead, has nicknamed the incident 'Traingate'.

From March: Exclusive - Epsom and St Helier chief executive says hospitals will keep A&E, children and maternity services for the next five years 

From April: Secret plans to close Epsom and St Helier and build new "super hospital" overheard on train

He said: "The reason why Epsom and St Helier get discounted in the BSBV approach is because St Helier is falling down and people don’t care about Epsom.

"It’s not in London so why would London Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) worry about Epsom when it’s in Surrey?

"The underpinning analysis which says the right answer is having three [hospitals in south west London] hasn’t really gone away.

"Unless you come out with an answer for the four geographies [in south west London] this isn’t going to work.

"We need to arrive at an answer for south west London that does involve keeping four hospitals.

"Inevitably that does mean Epsom and St Helier has to change because we’ve got two."

Wimbledon Times:

BSBV aimed to keep Kingston, Croydon and St George's hospitals - leaving people in Epsom and Sutton without a hospital nearby. Daniel Elkeles said four hospitals must remain - one for each area's population

BSBV, a multi-million pound review which was shelved last February, initially involved Epsom, St Helier, Kingston, Croydon and St George’s hospitals, and was looking at downgrading both Epsom and St Helier.

Epsom Hospital was only removed from the process after Surrey Downs' GPs voted against its proposals.

Mr Elkeles said: "We are trying to put a new proposal on the table which is right for the half a million people who use our services.

"Something exciting, new, which will provide amazing healthcare so when BSBV comes round again in the autumn, which is when it will, it can’t just do what it did last time because there’s a new thing on the table that they haven’t considered."

From April: "Disgraceful": Epsom reacts to hospital closure leak

He said the trust would produce a document, Case for Change, at its board meeting next month to "set out what a great hospital building of the 21st Century can look like" and "get permission from the system to have a conversation with our residents".

Mr Elkeles said half a billion pounds would be needed to fund new buildings, most likely obtained through a mixture of Government loans and private and public finance.

Asked whether Epsom and St Helier would both shut and be replaced by an 800-bed super-hospital in Sutton - the "preferred option" according to the Deloitte consultants - Mr Elkeles said: "The meeting we had wasn’t just a meeting with me. It was a meeting of the programme board for the project.

"We had reached the conclusion that we needed [in 2020-30] the same number of beds that we currently have.

"There’s a theoretical exercise to do about ‘can you put 800 beds on any of our trust sites?’

"That’s the conversation the consultants were referring to, to which we haven’t got an answer.

"If you were going to keep 800 beds in our catchment you do need to look at whether you put them all at Epsom, all at Sutton, or all at St Helier.

"I cannot see a scenario where the trust says it does not need to provide services at Epsom and St Helier under any circumstance."

Asked why the consultants were referring to having one 800-bed site at Sutton post-2020, Mr Elkeles added: "They are entitled to have a conversation which says put all 800 beds in a super hospital in Sutton.

"That is not what the trust would think is the right answer.

"I would be quite confident from the reaction generated in the news that’s not what the public would want either.

"You do need to do a piece of work about ‘could you put all 800 beds on one site?’

"There’s one thing doing the piece of work, there’s another thing understanding the implications of that and whether that’s the right answer."

Wimbledon Times:

Campaigners protesting outside Epsom Hospital last month following the "super hospital" leak

Three weeks before 'Traingate', Mr Elkeles told this newspaper that, under the trust's new Five Year Strategy for 2015-20, A&E, children and maternity services would be safe at both Epsom and St Helier for the next five years, adding that recruitment was a big issue for the hospitals caused by the continued uncertainty around the hospitals.

He said then: "All the talk about Epsom and St Helier needing to lose their services has gone away.

"People don’t have to worry in the next few years about putting out the placards."

Asked whether he thought it had been misleading not to mention the review considering options for post-2020 during this interview in March, he said: "Undoubtedly we’ve had mixed messages but there are no proposals for post-2020.

"At the same time as we put out our five year strategy we put out objectives for 2015-16 where one of them was to do the piece of work on what is the buildings answer for Epsom and St Helier post-2020.

"I don’t think we misled anyone.

"If we had in our minds that the answer post-2020 was to do what was reported in Traingate then yes we would have done.

"We are acting with integrity.

"Were we expecting the piece of work we were doing to be in the public domain when we spoke? Well, we weren’t.

"I was expecting to talk to you about the longer-term piece when it was relevant."

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