COST A MILLION?

Evening Post, Volume CXXII, Issue 120, 17 November 1936, Page 12

COST A MILLION?

THE HOSPITAL SCHEME

MORE INFORMATION WANTED

A FORMAL PROTEST

When a letter was received at the meeting of the Petone Borough Council last evening from the Wellington Hospital Board asking for support for the proposal to borrow £600,000 for .extensions, the view was taken that more information was necessary before the council could agree to give its support, and it was decided \o enter a formal protest until this information was received.

Councillor E. T. E. Hogg said that no one would doubt or question that extensions were urgently needed at the Wellington Hospital, but the present scheme came as a bombshell to the contributing local bodies. During the past few months he had brought up the question of sharing the cost of maintenance. Fees had been reduced and the means test as applied to the out-patients department abolished, and the extra cost would be borne by the Government and the local bodies, with the odds against the local bodies all the time. . Last June the council was approached by the Hospital Board for approval of a first instalment of £150,000 for an extension scheme then proposed. It was then said that the scheme would cost about £400,000. Now, without explanation, this scheme was jettisoned, and a new scheme was substituted.

Councillor Hogg: said he believed that the total scheme would not cost less than £1,000,000. The council surely wanted some more information before it approved of a scheme of which the first instalment was £600,000.

What had happened to the first scheme? "We should ask where all this is leading and follow the Wellington City Council in lodging a formal complaint," said Councillor Hogg. He suggested that the Hospital Board call a conference of local bodies and explain the scheme.

Councillors J. Huggan and W. H. Edwards supported the views of Councillor Hogg and it was decided to enter a formal protest.