Thousands sign town petition to keep A&E in Shrewsbury
A petition of more than 4,000 names calling for a new emergency care centre to be located in Shrewsbury will be handed to health chiefs tomorrow.
The Mayor of Oswestry, Councillor Paul Milner, says patients could be put at risk if the facilities in the county town are removed amid plans for a health services shake-up.
He will hand over his petition before a meeting of the Shropshire Clinical Commissioning Group at the Shirehall.
Councillor Milner has already written to the CCG leader, David Evans, putting forward his views on why what he described as a new, super A&E should be in Shrewsbury and not Telford.
The National Health Service's Future Fit Consultation says that Shropshire and Telford Hospital NHS Trust can not sustain two A&E departments.
It is consulting over its plans for one emergency care centre for the region, which would be able to offer more specialist care that can currently be accessed at either Shrewsbury or Telford, with urgent care centres created in three or four areas.
Councillor Milner says the location should be Shrewsbury. He said: "Telford is already served by Shropshire and emergency services in Wolverhampton and Stoke. However, if facilities were removed from Shrewsbury, the distance from some parts of north Shropshire to a site in Telford could be up to two hours. Clearly this is unacceptable and places patients at significant and unacceptable risk.
"The Oswestry bypass and the journey along the A5 are particularly difficult in terms of journey times and the accident record of the road. Since the opening of the bypass, some 48 fatal accidents have occurred with 312 serious casualties and 1085 slight injury accidents."
The mayor says that the CCG must also be mindful of the projected growth of Oswestry and its surrounds with an increase of some 2,200 houses projected.
Petitions have been placed in businesses in Oswestry and surrounding villages including St Martins and Weston Rhyn.
The petition calls upon the decision makers not to close Shrewsbury's A&E. It says if the decision is to site the new centre in Telford, then Oswestry must have its own urgent care centre.
