£27m Ludlow hospital plan is scrapped
Plans for a new £27 million hospital in Ludlow are officially dead in the water after health chiefs voted to scrap the project at a meeting today.
About 60 people attended the meeting of Shropshire Community Health NHS Trust at the town's racecourse this morning, where seven out of nine board members voted not to proceed with the controversial scheme.
The other two members, non-executive director Jane McKenzie and director of nursing Maggie Bailey, abstained.
Instead, £160,000 will be ploughed into Ludlow's existing community hospital on Gravel Hill to ensure it is fit for purpose for the "next two to five years".
A task force will also be set up including patients, nursing staff, health chiefs and councillors to look at ways of improving healthcare in the town.
It could include making Ludlow a "test-bed" for new technology initiatives, the meeting was told.
The new health facility had been planned for the eco park on the outskirts of town, and would Ludlow's two GP surgeries would have relocated to the new site as part of the plans.
But the meeting was told changes to the NHS nationally had delayed its implementation, and further looks at costings had revealed a potential £1.1 million per year shortfall in funding.
Julia Bridgewater, the trust's interim chief executive, said health bosses had "left no stone unturned" in looking for ways to keep the project on the table.But she said at most all they had been able to do was cut the shortfall down to £800,000 per year - meaning it would still need an injection of £20 million over the next 25 years from already stretched health budgets to allow it to go ahead.
She said: "Originally there was a great momentum in the system to see the development go ahead. "In the current financial climate there is not the same appetite to invest in buildings when pressure on front-line staff continues to increase."
Trust chairman Mike Ridley said: "I realise its not the position many, many people would have wanted.
"But it is the position we find ourselves in, and we now have to look at ways of improving the current hospital and healthcare services."
Full round-up and reactions in Friday's Shropshire Star
