Shropshire Star

Star comment: Fuse is lit on future of county

What is going to prove worse – the waiting, or the advent?

Published
Royal Shrewsbury Hospital

Shropshire is in the waiting stage at the moment with the Future Fit programme, which will determine the shape of the county's health services for the coming years and deep into the 21st century.

The fuse has been lit and we will in due course have the detonation which will come when Salopians and people in Mid Wales learn of the preferred way forward.

It is something that is going to affect everybody, and the big headline is going to be where the proposed new emergency centre for Shropshire will be, when two become one.

In other words, the likely template will no longer maintain two accident and emergency departments, based at the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital and the Princess Royal Hospital, but there will be one single centre for life and death emergencies.

It could be at Shrewsbury. It could be at Telford. Or it could be at a new site between the two.

Already interested parties have been lining up behind their own preferred choice. While some have called for the decision not to be seen in terms of Shrewsbury v Telford, the reality is that, unless the place-in-the-middle option is chosen, it boils down to a Shrewsbury or Telford choice.

The Future Fit team wanted to put their preferred option on the table before the general election in May, which would have inevitably made it an issue for local election debate.

The decision is now likely in the "late summer or early autumn".

This is a matter so important for Shropshire and Mid Wales that it should not be rushed. There will be many Salopians who are more than happy for things to carry on as they are. Having just one emergency centre, wherever it may be, does not appeal.

However, we have been told that things cannot go on as they are. We all know that when the preferred option is announced that that will not end the matter, but will take things to another stage, and one in which temperatures may well be raised higher as some folk feel they are the losers in the equation.

When we look back, we may consider that this is the lull before the storm. Future Fit is going to bring future turbulence.

That is going to have to be faced and, together, Shropshire is going to have to find a way forward without being at war within itself.

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