Peter Richards, pictured, is a senior paediatric neurosurgeon based at Oxford's Radcliffe Infirmary. As well as treating young patients with head injuries, his major interest is correcting skull and facial deformities.

Here, he explains why the Children's Hospital is vital to ensure the city's paediatric services are the UK's best In the old days when doctors couldn't do much for patients other than comfort them and hope they got better, the hospitals in Oxford developed from small buildings scattered throughout the city.

Nowadays we can do much more for our patients, especially children.

Major abnormalities, which would have put children into circuses labelled as freaks in Victorian times, can now be corrected and the children lead normal lives.

Children with infections which were fatal 100 years ago, can be treated and recover fully.

Cancers which would have killed children within weeks 50 years ago, can now be cured.

In order for this to happen, we have had to lose the single doctor who does everything, and we now all work closely in teams concentrating on the specialities we do best.

It is therefore daft to have the expertise and patients on several sites around Oxford.

The new children's hospital will fix this at a stroke.

All the patients and specialists will be together on one modern site, attached to a huge teaching hospital with all the support it can give.

It will be one of the best children's centres in the UK, and we hope - in time - in the world.

Unfortunately, if you want a Rolls-Royce service it costs Rolls-Royce money.

The Government has chipped in some cash, but not enough.

We need the help of our friends in the community we serve