I live near Northwick Park Hospital and have used both Northwick Park and Central Middlesex Hospitals regularly over the years.

To join last week’s demonstration against the closure of A&E unit of Central Middlesex Hospital, I travelled by public transport from Harrow town centre to the hospital.

It took well over an hour travelling by two buses and a train. This demonstrates the most difficult and unacceptable situation the closure has created for the residents in Harlesden and Stonebridge areas if they are to travel by public transport to visit A&E at Northwick Park.

The A&E unit at Central Middlesex shut its doors, despite a Care Quality Commission (CQC) report in August 2014, which gave the A&E unit a ‘good’ grade. The same report graded Northwick Park’s A&E (which is expected to pick up the extra volume of patients) as ‘requiring improvement’ and was found to have “inadequate staffing levels to provide safe care to patients within the major treatment area”.

Closure of a good A&E unit such as Central Middlesex makes no sense. No wonder the demonstrators (pictured) outside the hospital were joined by many angry local residents and patients, This was a very sad day for the NHS in Brent and areas of West London. This level of A&E closures is unprecedented and amounts to a policy experiment by the Government with no adequate safety measures.

My constituents in Brent expect and deserve better from those running their NHS.

It is deplorable that the Mayor of London, in spite of our constant pleas to him, has acted like a bystander and done nothing to help save A&E units from closure.

This decision is a travesty.

Navin Shah

AM London Assembly Member for Brent and Harrow