Shropshire needs new purpose-built A&E hospital on A5, says expert

David Sandbach, former chief executive of Telford’s Princess Royal Hospital, urged board members at a meeting of The Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust (SaTH) to consider an option of a new specialist emergency hospital when Future Fit goes out to public consultation.

Last year the Future Fit review recommended that the best of four options would be to have one A&E serving Shropshire and Mid Wales at Royal Shrewsbury Hospital.

The Princess Royal Hospital’s Women and Children’s unit would also be moved to RSH.

However all six panel members from Shropshire CCG voted for taking the plans to public consultation – but the six members representing Telford & Wrekin CCG voted against.

Mr Sandbach said Shropshire can have a successful emergency service at an affordable price, if health bosses copy the way things are done in Northumberland.

In 2015 the first hospital in England purpose-built for emergency care opened in Northumberland.

The facility in Cramlington has emergency care consultants on duty 24/7, and a range of specialists available seven days a week. Its opening led the downgrading of the three A&E units at Hexham, Wansbeck and North Tyneside hospitals.

The A&E departments at North Tyneside, Wansbeck and Hexham hospitals now offer a 24-hour walk-in service for less serious conditions

Mr Sandbach said: “I support the plans to separate planned care from emergency.

"However when the CCGs go out to public consultation on Future Fit I think they should include the option of a Northumbria system.

"It would be easier to raise the cash and build a specialist emergency centre between Telford and Shrewsbury. It would cost £130 million - this is significantly less than the £311 million in the current outline business case which has been supported by the Future Fit board.

"The task of raising £130 million is obviously much easier to accomplish than the task of raising £311 million; therefore the chances of successfully raising the necessary capital investment is much easier under an emergency care centre option than it is under the other options.

"Given the current civic discord in the county and the debt issue I believe the Shropshire public should be given the choice of an alternative clinically viable alternative to the options C and B in the outline business case.

"The public should have a real choice put to them as opposed to what has become a very divisive binary, win or lose, choice currently on offer."

Simon Wright, chief executive of SaTH, said: "We have had a number of visits to Northumbria already and have another one planned with members of the council later this month."

Last year health bosses said proposals for a single hospital had been discounted because they were unaffordable.