HEALTH chiefs in Dorset have come under fire after revealing it would cost nearly £150million upfront to modernise and secure the future of the county’s hospitals.

The public consultation into the controversial proposals to shake-up health services in Dorset has now ended and NHS Dorset Clinical Commissioning Group has revealed first estimates reveal 12,000 people have submitted their views with around 60,000 residents signing petitions in protest.

But the investment required to implement the plans has been described as ‘alarming’ and ‘unachievable’ by a body representing medics.

A study by the British Medical Association (BMA) revealed the capital costs to deliver the country’s sustainability and transformation plans (STPs), in a bid to help the NHS repair its crumbling finances and meet clinical organisation challenges, is at least £9.5billion - money the NHS does not have according to the BMA.

Dorset CCG say they would need £147 million of funding from NHS England for its preferred Clinical Services Review (CSR) proposals to make Royal Bournemouth Hospital the county’s major emergency centre and Poole Hospital a major planned centre. That is £42m less than if Poole Hospital became the major emergency centre, they say.

The one-off cost would be to carry out the build itself such as creating a new purpose-built maternity and paediatrics unit, expanding the emergency department as well as providing additional beds and new theatres to cope with the additional demand at each centre.

BMA South West regional chairman Dr Helena McKeown claims the investment required is £148m. She said: "Dorset told NHS England that they would need an alarming £148m in capital funding in order to deliver these so called ‘transformation’ plans.

"This is on top of millions of pounds needed for a backlog of other repair work.

"With NHS budgets severely strained, funding from capital budgets is often used to prop up day to day running costs in the NHS.

"The reality of what is needed to implement 'transformation' plans is unachievable if the government does not provide the long-term investment desperately needed."

She added: "The NHS and social system is at breaking point and the STP process could have offered a chance to deal with some of the problems facing the NHS.

"But from its very beginning, this process was carried out largely behind closed doors, without proper consultation and input from those on the front line.

"The plans are fast becoming completely unworkable and have instead revealed a health service that is unsustainable without urgent further investment, and with little capacity to ‘transform’ in any meaningful way other than by reducing the provision of services on a drastic scale.”

But the boss of Dorset CCG who began work on the county’s CSR before STPs were submitted, said they have been 'far more transparent than other areas’ and its plans and figures have been accessible to the public since April 2016.

Tim Goodson, the organisation’s chief officer, said he was ‘confident’ of securing the funding necessary for proposals to go ahead.

He added the new model would create a saving of £18-19m each year and ‘save lives’ by ensuring there are more specialist consultants working together as well as the major planned site freeing up more beds for emergencies and less cancellations.

Mr Goodson said it was too early to discuss the financial implications of cutting the number of community hospitals from 13 to just seven ‘community hubs’ with beds and a further five without beds but added this could go ahead without additional funding.

“These are big numbers but they must be put into perspective and this is investing into the county’s acute hospital infrastructure,” he said.

"We think the proposals will deliver a financial saving but we didn’t come at this starting with finance. We looked firstly at the quality service we would need to meet the requirements.

“In terms of 'can we secure the money?', we were ahead of the game on this and started our planning two years ago. If NHS England hadn’t supported the plans, we wouldn’t have been allowed to go to consultation so whilst there are no guarantees with it and they reserve the right on what they are doing, if they thought these weren’t a good set of plans or the capital ask was too much or we had no chance of getting it, they wouldn’t have allowed us to go out to public consultation on it."

Mr Goodson added because no final decisions have been made on plans which are at public consultation stage, no capital request has been put forward to NHS England.

“This will only happen once a business case has been put together following the results of the public consultation and agreement on final decisions,” he added.