Planning, publics, and the reorganisation of London’s teaching hospital system

Whether due to wartime bomb damage or decades of under-investment, the poor condition of inherited buildings was one of the earliest crises the British National Health Service (NHS) had to contend with. Yet for almost fourteen years, no central government policy came close to providing adequate support for the development of new facilities. Ed Devane’s project looks at how the planning and design of hospitals and health centres continued as a dynamic, locally rooted, and often contentious process, which is altogether symbolic of how the wider health service developed and acquired meaning.

This talk will explore negotiations between planners and the public by focusing on attempts to reorganise London’s teaching hospital system in the post-war period. The 1944 Goodenough Committee on medical schools recognised education had become too focused on a narrow range of conditions unrepresentative of the general populations’ need. A long history of neglect by doctors caused many ordinary people to fear being turned away or taught upon in elite teaching hospitals.

With many of these institutions concentrated in a small area of the capital, many hoped the NHS and a more consolidated welfare state would resolve problems of treatment experience, introducing more systematised provision and equalised resource allocation. Taking the relocation of Charing Cross Hospital from the Strand to Fulham as a case study, this talk will discuss that whilst many teaching institutions remained in London, their provision has notably changed.