The controversial Future Fit review of hospital services, which could see the loss of the accident and emergency unit at Telford’s Princess Royal Hospital, has come under renewed fire from Councillor Shaun Davies.
It was revealed yesterday that a public consultation on the plans, which had been due to begin at the start of October, was now likely to be put back until after May next year.
Officials behind the plan said the delay was while they await a decision about whether funding is likely to be available for the plan.
Councillor Davies said: “The process is completely flawed. That a consultation could have started in spite of the NHS not knowing whether they’ve got the money to deliver the outcome simply beggars belief.
“This whole process has caused great alarm, distress and division to communities.”
He said proposals to move the Princess Royal Hospital’s £28 million Women and Children’s Centre to Shrewsbury just two years after it opened made no sense.
Councillor Davies said any decision would take years to implement, and reiterated his calls for the county to have two fully resourced emergency units.
North Shropshire MP Owen Paterson said he too was infuriated by the delay.
Meanwhile, health managers in 44 areas of England have been ordered to draw up strategies setting out how they will reduce costs and improve care in the wake of a record £2.45 billion deficit.
NHS England is currently considering Shropshire’s draft Sustainability and Transformation Plan (STP), which sets out a number of service changes and cuts, which would help tackle the predicted deficit in the county’s health services expected to open up by 2021. The STPs are being created by regions across the country and are seen by critics as a way of cutting funding from the health service.
