‘Saving hospital is not about scaremongering’

IN RESPONSE to the letter from Marcus Warnes (Post & Times October 17), this is not the first time I have been accused of scaremongering in respect of the Leek Moorlands Hospital.

That happened back in February 2017, when I warned in a Labour Party leaflet that beds were to close at the hospital.

The five-year NHS Sustainability and Transformation Plan for Staffordshire and Stoke-on-trent, developed in total secrecy by local NHS chief officers and Tory Council leaders, was finally published in December 2016.

It spelt out that they planned to close 167 community hospital beds within two years so it was clear that Leek’s beds were under threat.

Now nearly two years on, Marcus Warnes is trying to mislead us into thinking that local health services will improve and that we will have some influence on their outcome.

He says local people have helped design their proposals for local health services.

It is true that Councillor Pam Wood and I have attended numerous meetings over the past year about the development of local health services along with colleagues across North Staffordshire.

But despite the case we have relentlessly made about maintaining the 37 beds at Leek Hospital, they have been obsessed with keeping them closed and filling the gap with care homes.

They say the reason for doing so is to improve the outcome for patients but the reality was confirmed by the NHS Independent Reconfiguration Panel that concluded in October 2017 that the closure of local community hospital beds in North Staffordshire was about ‘cost cutting rather than the implementation of better services with improved outcomes for patients.’

Mr Warnes avoids mentioning beds and writes about reconfiguring services to ensure they are provided in the right place by the right teams. I am not at all reassured. We must continue to fight to save Leek Moorlands Hospital.

Councillor Charlotte Atkins Leek