St Bart’s signs up for cheaper energy that’s ‘interruptible’
ONE of the country’s leading heart attack and cancer treatment hospitals has been criticised for signing a controversial energy contract that allows its gas supplies to be switched off with just a few hours’ warning.
St Bart’s has joined more than 100 hospitals across the country in signing cheaper “interruptible gas contracts”.
NHS Trust bosses insist their back-up diesel generators would leap into action if the supply was cut – but the pressure group London Health Emergency said the cut-price deals were “beyond belief”.
Geoff Martin, chairman of London Health Emergency, said: “This is all part of the massive cuts drive within the NHS that has seen administrators encouraged by outside accountants to save money by signing contracts that mean they cannot rely on gas supplies from one day to the next. Hospitals may have back-up generators, but the consequence for patients and hospital staff, should they go wrong, is too horrific to contemplate.”
Gas supplies, which come from the North Sea, have never been switched off to hospitals before – but campaigners argue St Bart’s should be prepared for any eventuality.
With the NHS facing huge cuts over the next three years, hospital bosses are being forced into making savings all over the hospital.
A spokesman for Bart’s said: “In the event of gas supply interruptions the Trust has dual fuel boilers and sufficient reserves of back-up fuel, in the form of diesel oil, to ensure the hospital could run as normal.”
TOM FOOT