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23
HEALTH SERVICES OF THE AREA
HOSPITALS
Particulars of the hospital services of the area, including details of
out-patient facilities, were set out in the Annual Report of 1954.
General Hospital Service. The only general hospital in the district
is the Harrow Hospital at Roxeth Hill, Harrow-on-the-Hill, with some
120 beds. The hospital which serves most of the area is the Edgware
General Hospital which is just outside the district on the Edgware Road.
This was opened in 1927 as the Redhill Hospital, being intended to be
the prototype of municipal hospitals that the legislation which was to be
introduced was expected to bring into being. The hospital was taken
over by the Middlesex County Council in 1930 as the Redhill County
Hospital of about 200 beds. Most of the extensions planned as part of
the County Council's hospital programme in 1936 were completed in
1938 and further additions were made in 1939. The County Council's
planning of hospitals throughout the county did not provide for a new
hospital in Harrow, but it was assumed that the large new hospital to be
built in the locality to the south-west of Harrow would serve the needs of
those in part of the area and would relieve the demand on some of the
existing hospitals. But before that hospital was put up, the National
Health Service Act had come into operation, with the result that nearly
all hospitals throughout the county passed into the hands of the Minister
of Health, most of them to be parcelled out amongst the fourteen Regional
Hospital Boards, with other arrangements made for the administration of
the teaching hospitals. Under these arrangements the Redhill County
Hospital once more changed its name, becoming the Edgware General
Hospital and was the largest hospital in the Hendon Group under the
administration of the Hendon Group Hospital Management Committee
under the North West Metropolitan Regional Hospital Board. In the
meantime Charing Cross Hospital had acquired a site at Northwick Park
on which was to be erected the new hospital and medical school. In
anticipation of this large new hospital coming here, the Harrow Hospital
and also the Wembley Hospital and the Kingsbury Maternity Hospital
became contributory hospitals of the Charing Cross Hospital. The
Minister of Health in 1955 made a pronouncement about future hospital
developments from which it was learned that the first stage of the erection
of the Charing Cross Hospital at Northwick Park was in the 1957/58
programme. Difficulties were being encountered though in progress being
made because more than one authority was concerned, the Minister of
Health being responsible for the hospital; but the medical school is an
incorporated school of the University of London, and the policy of the
University and the University Grants Committee did not favour the
building of a medical school on the Northwick Park site because the site
was too far from central London. The Board of Governors, anxious as
they were that a start should be made on the new hospital, felt: " There
can be no question of starting the new hospital until it is certain that the
school will be rebuilt, if not simultaneously, then within a short space of
taie after the hospital." In August it was learned that the Board of
Governors of the Charing Cross Hospital had accepted in principle a