Wellington Town Council tables motion against downgrading Princess Royal Hospital A&E

The town council has tabled a motion calling on health chiefs to instead improve on the current A&E provision at Telford's hospital.

This comes as the NHS is implementing its Future Fit proposals which would see the Princess Royal Hospital (PRH) downgraded from having a fully functioning A&E department.

Under the health authority’s £312 million transformation of the two acute hospitals run by the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust (SaTH) critical care would only be carried out at the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital.

Councillor Crispin Barker tabled a motion at Wellington Town Council’s monthly meeting on Tuesday night which was seconded by councillor Giles Luter.

It said: “Wellington Town Council acknowledges the fundamental importance of a fully-functioning local health economy to the wellbeing and economic security of Wellington residents.

“Accordingly, this council believes that any reduction or removal of emergency department services poses a significant risk to the health and wellbeing of the local population.

“Furthermore, this council believes that funds spent relocating services could be used to improve and increase them locally.

“The spend on the current project will almost certainly result in less accessible services and greater postcode discrimination for the people of Wellington.

“Therefore, Wellington Town Council opposes any attempt to diminish or remove full emergency department services at Princess Royal Hospital and urges relevant healthcare authorities, government officials and stakeholders to maintain and improve comprehensive emergency department services at Princess Royal Hospital.”

Councillor Simon Day, Haygate ward member, claimed that the current plans were based on the model of ‘finding a penny whilst losing a pound’.

He said that a ‘lack of foresight’ will not resolve increasing numbers of people attending A&E – an 11 per cent rise since 2018.

Councillor Day added that as a paramedic based in Shropshire he ‘regularly’ witnessed queues of ambulances outside emergency departments in the county.

“These plans take no account of the [house] building in the county which will inevitably see that demand increase again,” said councillor Day.

“This is a plan which will deliver centralised A&E services in a department which is too small to overcome issues causing harm to patients today.

“Current plans to provide an A&E department, barely bigger than the original A&E footprint commissioned in the mid-1970s, will again fail to overcome the issues and the horrendous amounts of time patients spend waiting in ambulances outside A&E, causing harm to those patients and significantly delaying ambulance responses to patients in the community.”

Councillor Day called for all stakeholders to ‘get back around the table’ to design a plan for local health services ‘truly fit for our future, before it is too late’.

Councillor Joan Gorse, ward member for Arleston, said that at the PRH during 2018 just one patient waited over 12 hours in A&E, while during 2023 that figure had risen to 1,068 patients waiting over 12 hours – a 100,000 per cent increase.

“This is a terrible thing to have to put up with in Shropshire,” said Councillor Gorse. “It’s unbelievable for patients and their relatives. It doesn’t make sense.

“These figures show how busy the Princess Royal Hospital is. They have more patients than ever before and we need to keep a 24-hour A&E in Telford. There are too many people in the county for one A&E.”

Wellington Town Council ward members voted unanimously to support the motion.