Sefton Council has thrown its weight behind a bid to save Southport Hospital.
The councillors have overwhelmingly backed a motion from local Councillor Tony Dawson calling for Southport Hospital to be retained and expanded. The motion, debated at Southport Town Hall, was seconded by Dr John Pugh, the leader of the Liberal Democrat group of councillors.
Councillor Dawson told the assembled councillors that not only was there a national crisis, with many wrong decisions having been made by many people, but there was a very important local dimension to saving local NHS services. For, while the people of Southport’s attention was being diverted to the General Election, NHS planners and managers continue to work on the options for the future hospital provision across Southport and West Lancashire.
Hard decisions are being faced in the NHS in the North West as financial troubles of the local NHS Trust are made worse every day. And the pressures of clinical change and recruitment difficulties, which will become worse if Britain leaves the EU, means that these decisions need making sooner rather than later.
Councillor Dawson told the Council meeting at Southport Town Hall that the continuation of the two site hospital at Southport and Ormskirk was not a viable option for the future. Indeed it had never been a sensible suggestion and owed more to politics than to clinical factors or financial sense. Ever since the Labour minister decided to take maternity and childrens services to Ormskirk, leaving most adult services at Southport, the extra costs of working on two sites had hit the provision of clinical services in the area by an extra million pounds or so every year.
Really hard choices were going to have to be made about the hospitals and this, Councillor Dawson insisted, should involve the local public and their elected representatives being properly and fully consulted at an early stages about the options. It was wrong, Councillor Dawson said, that all these plans were being made in secret meetings while the people of Southport were kept in the dark. What was very likely was that local residents would be presented with a ‘fait accomplit’ and a sham consultation lasting a few weeks to rubber stamp decisions already made.
There needs to be a concerted campaign to retain Southport Hospital as the principal site for in patient services and A&E, says Councillor Dawson. Southport is logically the best site for this but others have other ideas.
Labour politicians in all the areas around Southport have already put forward their own proposals and these all involve taking the A&E and main hospital and further and further away from Southport. Sefton Central MP Bill Esterson has backed building a new hospital between Southport and Ormskirk. Rosie Cooper MP has told her local Ormskirk residents that she is backing Ormskirk hospital.
Perhaps the most radical proposal has been advanced in the press and media by Labour’s Deputy Leader on Lancashire County Council John Fillis. Councillor Fillis is the senior Labour councillor in the area presently served by the Southport hospitals which covers Burscough and Skelmersdale as well as Ormskirk, Southport and Formby. Councillor Fillis proposes that the new Hospital should be built in Skelmersdale, with a link to the M58. And he has a novel idea to help speed Southport residents to this new hospital if it is built. Councillr Fillis points to the Brroms Cross Link Road at Thornton which speeds traffic to Switch Island. Councillor Fillis says that Southport and Formby patients and visitors could take their cars that way to a hospital at Skelmersdale rather than getting tangled up in Ormskirk Town Centre.
Councilllor Dawson’s Motion passed by the Council reads:
“NHS Services in the North-West
This Council:
1) Notes that plans to restructure the provision of NHS services, particularly the siting of acute services throughout the North West Region, has been continuing for some time, with the process largely proceeding in secret and not involving either patients or the wider communities involved.
2) Commits itself to working with local communities to ensure that profound changes which significantly affect the manner in which the NHS is delivered and received in this area are not introduced into hospitals and clinics serving local communities, without the fullest genuine involvement of local residents and their elected representatives in any such decisions.
3) Following the Clinical Senate Review of the Transformation of Acute Services in Southport & Ormskirk NHS Trust (2019), this Council wishes to make clear, in the context of that report, that the Council, faced with the alternative of consolidated hot site in Southport or Ormskirk, has a clear preference for Southport.”
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