Future Fit: Shropshire NHS chief in warning over more delays

Simon Wright, the man in charge of both Royal Shrewsbury Hospital and Princess Royal Hospital, Telford, says infighting will play into the hands of "out-of-county groups that would love to take more services into their cities".

The intervention comes after the Future Fit process hit a brick wall earlier this month when Shropshire and Telford's Clinical Commissioning Groups split down geographical lines on a decision over the future location of the county's sole emergency centre.

That came after the three-year Future Fit process, which was designed to negate geographical interests, decided that the emergency centre should be based at the Shrewsbury site, along with women's and children's services.

The six members from Shropshire CCG voted to go ahead with the plans while the six from Telford voted against.

Mr Wright has dismissed suggestions over costs related to the project and says that the people behind the review made their decision on population needs.

He said "There has been a lot of talk of the building costs being suggested for the two hospitals and why would we prefer a more expensive solution in Shrewsbury compared to Telford.

"Well the simple truth is that both sites are affordable and so the collective group of over 50 people in NHS Future Fit took into consideration other factors and not just the money: quality, transport, safety, outcomes and population needs.

"In doing they so identified that the emergency centre should be in Shrewsbury, but Telford's younger population needs urgent care, planned care and diagnostics alongside a new cancer centre, state-of-the-art surgical unit and screening services.

"This would also still deliver paediatrics and births for the majority of women. Of the roughly 300 people who daily attend the accident and emergency departments, the vast majority need urgent ambulatory treatment not a hospital admission.

"That is what happens now and that will be the same in the future.

"Those people who attend accident and emergency in an ambulance would go to the emergency centre for diagnosis and treatment for their first 72 hours, then either home or transfer to Telford.

"Twenty four-hour access would still be available for urgent treatment and many new services, like the new cancer centre, would arrive in Telford."

The idea for new cancer services in Telford would not affect Shrewsbury's Lingen Davies Centre which would remain in place.

Mr Wright said that delays in the consultation would lead to more services being lost to Stoke and Birmingham.

He said: "It is easy to say this is about money or try and paint this as winners and losers, but the simple truth here is that our population needs new state-of-the-art facilities; they need to be services which the population will increasingly need in the years ahead and their design needs to encourage new professionals to live and work in our counties and in so doing stop the drift of clinical services into Stoke and Birmingham.

"Fighting among ourselves will only play to other out-of-county groups which would love to take more services into these cities."The NHS has continued to change over 60 years and will continue to do so in the next 20 years, the only question is: will we determine our future and our services or will people from outside Shropshire, Telford & Wrekin and Powys do this for us? I trust the doctors and nurses who have created this service model to do what's right for our population. We need to start talking with our public, our friends, our families about the real detail of how each hospital will look and listen to concerns and shape the future design together. We need to start formal consultation with our population now."