Watch: Zoe’s Place fight raised in Parliament by Liverpool MP as fundraising total confirmed

A bid to save one of Liverpool’s most vital children’s hospices threatened with closure has been raised in Parliament.

The entire city was rocked by the announcement earlier this month that Zoe’s Place in West Derby would face closure at the end of the year as the lease on its current home on Yew Tree Lane is expiring and it had “insufficient time and money” to relocate. This is despite a planning application for a new £3.5m facility being greenlit by Liverpool Council just weeks ago.

Charity bosses said the time taken to get planning permission has left insufficient time to construct the building. This, along with a “significant rise” in the projected costs and “the challenge of raising funding in the current economic climate” means there are now insufficient funds available for the project.

This prompted a city-wide effort to raise the more than £5m needed to keep Zoe’s Place going. It has now been brought to the attention of government, as Kim Johnson, Liverpool Riverside MP, asked a question during Prime Minister’s Questions to Deputy PM Angela Rayner.

Ms Johnson said: “Zoe’s Place in the West Derby area of Liverpool is a hospice providing support to sick children and their families and is being threatened with closure and has to find £5m by the end of the year. Does the Deputy Prime Minister agree with me that hospices like these needs to be on a statutory footing and not reliant on charitable funding?”

Ms Rayner replied: “I thank my honourable friend for that question and the hospice situation in this country has faced significant challenges because of the 14 years of devastation under the Conservatives. The health secretary has already raised these issues and knows that this is of importance and I’ll make sure she gets a meeting.”

Thousands of people have taken part in fundraising initiatives to help the hospice, which has supported countless local families in their most difficult moments.

On Thursday, business leaders and politicians gathered in Liverpool to confirm plans to create a 'Zoe's Place 2.0' and announce that £2.8 million had been raised over the past few weeks to help save the hospice.

The 2.0 scheme would make Zoe’s Place in Liverpool a standalone charity. It is currently run from a head office in Warwickshire and has sites in Middlesbrough and Coventry. The charity said it needed to raise more than £5m by the end of the year to keep a hospice in Liverpool.

Ian Byrne, the independent MP for West Derby who has been a leading voice in the campaign to save Zoe’s Place, said he is "massively optimistic" about saving the hospice.

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Hospices, which provide palliative and end of life care for terminally ill people, are charities. Hospice care hasn’t always been seen as being a part of mainstream medicine, so hospice facilities have tended to emerge independently. The NHS funds, on average, less than 30% of the cost of all of the care that hospices provide.

Zoe’s Place was founded in Liverpool by Professor Jack Scarisbrick in 1995, with the name chosen as Zoe means ‘gift of life’ in Greek. In 2004 a second Zoe’s Place was opened in Middlesbrough and in 2011 the third hospice opened in Coventry.

Posting on social media, Ms Johnson added: “Hospices offer life-changing care and must be supported. I’ll continue working with MPs and local groups to secure the best outcome for Liverpool’s families.”

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