Iceland cash hospice cut decision

Naomi House had nearly �6m in the UK division of a collapsed Icelandic bank

The board of a children's hospice will decide whether to suspend a new service over uncertainty about cash invested in a failed Icelandic bank.

Naomi House in Sutton Scotney, Hampshire, has �5.7m tied up with Kaupthing Singer and Friedlander.

The board will meet on Tuesday night to decide the future of a project in which staff visit dying children in their own homes to give palliative care.

Maria Miller, MP for Basingstoke, has called on the government to help.

Ms Miller said charities were given reassurances that "special arrangements" would be made for them, but now it appeared the hospice may not be eligible for protection and faced the prospect of a "protracted fight" to recover any money at all.

But she claims she has had "no response from the Treasury at all".

The hospice looks after terminally-ill children in its home county and also Berkshire, Dorset, the Isle of Wight, Surrey, West Sussex and Wiltshire.

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