Children's A&E to move from Ormskirk to Southport

Children's A&E services are set to move from Ormskirk to Southport Hospital.

Health bosses have approved a controversial plan to combine adult and children's A&E services for Southport and Ormskirk Hospitals.

Currently adults are treated at Southport and Formby District General Hospital, while the children's A&E is based in Ormskirk and District General Hospital.

The committee heard the new arrangement would "allow a round-the-clock service" but MP Ashley Dalton said West Lancashire felt "left behind" and people there were concerned how they would access care.

Until 2003, both sites had adult and children's A&E services.

The then government split them after deciding it would be safer for each site to specialise.

But for many years people in charge of healthcare locally have been unhappy about services being split between two sites, 10 miles apart along narrow rural roads, and health bosses said it would be safer on one site.

Craig Harris, who is a member of the Integrated Care Board (ICB), said the decision to move children's A&E to Southport had been made with the aim of providing "robust" services across the community.

Harris said 70% of the attendances at Ormskirk could be managed outside of the hospital.

"We want to make sure that what we are doing in the community in West Lancs is robust, so investing in our GP services, a new health centre, and continued improvement for our urgent treatment centres," he said.

Dalton, West Lancashire MP, said the joint committee's Southport decision was "really disappointing" and she would be writing to the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care Wes Streeting.

"It's a worry for people about how they are going to be able to access services," she said.

"There's also a deep rooted fear that it is part of a long tradition of undermining services in West Lancashire.

"The area feels pretty much forgotten and left behind, and people are really fearful about what this might lead to in the future."

Since 2020, a lack of staff led to the children's A&E at Ormskirk being closed between midnight and 08:00.

Bosses said the new arrangement would "allow a round-the-clock service" for children's A&E.

Harris said that services in Skelmersdale would also be reviewed "to offer a better service for urgent and emergency care patients", including expanding GP and outreach services.

Ever since the plan was announced in the summer of 2024 the proposal has been controversial.

The board had already made it clear last summer that its preference was for services to move to Southport and Formby District General, but health bosses had stressed that the decision was not a "done deal".

Many of those supporting the move to Ormskirk District General Hospital questioned the point of the consultation.

They also challenged the calculations used to claim that the move to Southport would be cheaper.

The joint committee of ICBs behind the plans said that, for safety reasons, other services would also have to move as well.

If the decision had gone the other way, health bosses said transferring Southport's emergency department to Ormskirk would have meant moving seven other services - general medicine, critical care, elderly medicine, respiratory medicine, medical gastroenterology, urgent diagnostic haematology and biochemistry and liaison psychiatry. The cost was calculated as £91m.

The Southport decision, by contrast, meant only one other service had to move - paediatric inpatient care, costing £33m, it added.

The changes are expected to take at least three years to make.

But Dalton said she would urge the health secretary to look again at the decision.

"There is a process that we can go through," she said.

"The decision has now been made, which means I can now actually ask for the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care to call that decision in and re-look at it."

Elizabeth, who is pregnant with her third child, said her two-year-old son who has severe allergic reactions, could have died if it had taken more time to get him to hospital.

She said she was "really concerned" with the plan to move the children's A&E service.

"In April last year he had his first anaphylactic shock. I didn't know at the time what that was and when we got to the hospital, they basically say that we just made it in time to save his life.

"You're not supposed to just walk into a hospital, you're supposed to ring an ambulance, but I didn't know what I was dealing with.

"If I'd have had to go to Southport, he probably would have died.

She said she regularly visited the hospital with her son and said "he gets very sick very easily".

"To go to Southport, it's miles away. How are we supposed to get there so quickly, when he's so ill?"

She said was also concerned that people would be losing their jobs.

Philip Gilligan who has a five-month-old baby said: "It's concerning, that's for sure. It's a long wa y to Southport.

"The location of Ormskirk within the borough is very central to everywhere - Southport, Skelmersdale, Burscough Rufford, Maghull - all those places, but in Southport, half the radius is in the sea.

"You're making people travel as far as Southport which is probably 45 minutes drive, easily [from Skelmersdale]. It could be life and death."

His concerns were echoed by Daniela Slater, who has a young daughter.

She said the decision was "upsetting" and was concerned about the extra time it would take to get to the children's A&E, especially during peak hour traffic.

"I think its a real loss for Ormskirk," she said.

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