A DECISION into where Oxfordshire children with heart problems will be treated has been delayed.

The High Court this week quashed a consultation into deciding where to base paediatric cardiac surgery after labelling part of its process “flawed”.

Parents now face months of uncertainty over where their children will be treated.

Children’s heart surgery at the John Radcliffe Hospital stopped last year after four deaths, but a link between services in Oxfordshire and surgeons at Southampton General Hospital has since blossomed.

The Government wants fewer, larger centres and the Joint Committee of Primary Care Trusts (JCPCT) has put forward four options, of which one of them involves Southampton University Hospitals NHS Trust.

An announcement on the preferred choice had been due next month but London’s Royal Brompton Hospital launched a judicial review which was partly upheld in the High Court on Monday. Judge Mr Justice Owen upheld one of the Royal Brompton’s claims – finding that the process for scoring the hospital’s research and innovation as poor was “flawed” — effectively quashing the consultation.

The JCPCT has said it will launch an appeal, but said if it is unsuccessful it will hold the public consultation again or hold a meeting to decide the preferred way forward.

Maria Crocker, vice-chairman of Oxfordshire’s Young Hearts charity, said: “We’re all tired. We’ve been campaigning really heavily and we thought we would have an outcome by the end of the year. We’ve still got a strong link with Southampton and we’ll carry on going there until the decision is made.

“It kind of puts us on tenterhooks a bit, but we’ve been on tenterhooks for so long now it’s almost by the by.”