Southmead Hospital is actually in Horfield, councillor tells naming panel

A HORFIELD councillor believes the name for Southmead's new super hospital should reflect its geographical location.

As reported in The Post, a new name is being considered for the £430 million hospital which will bring services from Frenchay and Southmead together under one roof.

A shortlist of six names – including three variations of Southmead Hospital – has been drawn up following suggestions from staff and has gone out to the public vote.

But local councillor Cheryl Ann (Lib Dem) believes the name of the hospital should reflect the fact that it sits firmly in the ward of Horfield.

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"Every single entrance and part of Southmead Hospital is in Horfield," she said.

"The boundary is Southmead Road. I have one side – where the hospital is – and Southmead has the other."

Ms Ann contacted the chief executive of North Bristol NHS Trust (NBT), Marie-Noelle Orzel, to suggest recognising the impact of the hospital on local residents.

"It dominates Horfield, and affects Horfield every bit as much as it affects Southmead," she said.

"Its presence skews employment figures, infrastructure requirements, transport funding and planning considerations.

"While the positive effects for the hospital are numerous and spread across the whole of north Bristol, the local negative impact is too often associated solely with Southmead which receives infrastructure funding and compensation in mitigation – despite the actual hospital itself being in Horfield.

"It would have been nice if Horfield could have been raised as a possibility and staff informed that the hospital is in Horfield."

Ms Ann, who lives in Horfield herself, said that her role was to ensure people in the area were represented and had a sense of pride in where they lived.

"Part of my role is to increase pride and it just brought it home to me that all these people who thought they were born in Southmead were actually born in Horfield," she said.

Ms Ann, who has been on a site visit to the new hospital, said she was encouraged to see the super hospital taking shape and said that another consideration could be to call it North Bristol Hospital.

Ms Orzel said that discussions about a potential new name for the hospital had considered Westbury- on-Trym, which is its official address, but not Horfield.

"Back in September, we asked our staff to suggest new names for the hospital site and received over 400 suggestions," she said.

"We then formed a judging panel with members of the board, staff and public.

"Where Southmead is based was discussed at length as Westbury-on- Trym is our official address rather than Southmead. We felt Southmead was such a strong link that to use another suburb or other geographical reference, such as North Bristol, may not reflect the size and scale of the project, hence we have a naming option with Bristol prefixed before Southmead."

The names that have made the shortlist are Southmead Hospital, Bristol Southmead Hospital, New Southmead Hospital, Bristol Brunel Hospital, Elizabeth Blackwell Hospital and Prince William Hospital, which would require approval from the Lord Lieutenant's office.

Feedback from the public and NBT staff needs to be received by February 28, after which the results will be presented to the hospital board so it can make a decision ahead of the new hospital opening in 2014.

More than 1,000 people have already voted for their preferred name on the hospital's website www.nbt.nhs.uk/newhospital.