Chorley A&E full-time reopening floated

There is “evidence” to support consideration being given to reopening the accident and emergency department at Chorley and South Ribble Hospital 24 hours a day, the government has revealed.

It is more than a decade since the facility last operated around the clock, but in the Commons on Tuesday, health secretary James Murray raised the prospect of a full-time service being restored.

He said Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (LTH) – which runs both Chorley Hospital and the Royal Preston – had carried out a “feasibility study” into the possibility.

Staff shortages were blamed for the emergency department initially closing completely in April 2016, before moving to part-time opening the following January. The 8am-8pm working pattern established at that point remains in place today.

Ten years later, the Euxton Lane site is also still the focus of a weekly demonstration each Saturday morning by campaigners calling for a return to a 24-hour A&E operation.

Mr. Murray made his comments in response to a question from South Ribble’s Labour MP Paul Foster, who said of the prospect of a full-time emergency department once again being on offer: “The public support it, the staff support it, the local NHS trust supports it – and the neighbouring hospitals at Preston, Wigan and Blackpool support it.

“But NHS England is blocking [full] reinstatement and will not say why. Will ministers please meet with local MPs and all key stakeholders and get the A&E at Chorley and South Ribble Hospital fully reinstated?”

In response, the health secretary said: “I welcome the fact [that] the trust, as I understand it, has now completed a feasibility study and that [it] concluded that there is an evidence-based case to explore extending to a 24-hour emergency department.

“This work is now being developed with the ICB [the Lancashire and South Cumbria Integrated Care Board] and I look forward very much to seeing those proposals progress.”

However, NHS England has since strenuously denied Paul Foster’s suggestion that it was acting a roadblock to round-the-clock opening, telling the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) that there was currently “no formal proposal” for it to stymie.

The MP acknowledged that the health secretary’s comments did not mean the return of a 24-hour A&E was a done deal, but he said it was “a very positive response from the despatch box” – and the most progress there had been on the issue in many years.

Speaking to the LDRS shortly after asking his question in the Commons chamber, Mr. Foster said: “It just goes to show that local communities’ voices are heard. [The A&E] should have never closed in the first place…[and] we’ve had a partial success just by the fact it’s open part-time.

“We’re not there yet, but I’m delighted with what the minister said…and I just really hope we can get it across the line.”

The LDRS can reveal that the then health secretary, Wes Streeting, made an unpublicised visit to Chorley Hospital over Christmas last year.

During Tuesday’s discussion in Parliament, his successor nodded to the longstanding interest Chorley MP and Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle – who was chairing the question-and-answer session – had taken in the issue.

Sir Lindsay later told the LDRS: “I have met regularly with ministers and lobbied for a 24-hour provision, which is vital to adequately serve the needs of the population of Chorley and South Ribble.

“Paul Foster and I are in complete agreement that the 24-hour provision must be delivered as a matter of urgency and I welcomed the response from the Secretary of State to the question. We now have to ensure these promising words are turned into a reality.”

A spokesperson for NHS England in the North West said: “NHS England is not blocking any proposals relating to Chorley and South Ribble A&E.

“No formal proposal has been put forward to NHS England. Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has completed a feasibility study, which is currently being considered by NHS Lancashire and South Cumbria ICB, who are responsible for developing and bringing forward any proposal.

“Should a formal proposal come forward to NHS England, it will be assessed through the established reconfiguration process, which carefully considers all relevant impacts.

“We remain committed to ensuring patients across Lancashire have access to safe, high-quality emergency care.”

LTH and the ICB were also approached for comment, but had not responded by the time of publication.

There was widespread shock when the then 24-hour A&E department at Chorley and South Ribble Hospital was shut down at short notice in April 2016 after it emerged it was minus six of the 14 middle-grade doctors needed to staff it.

The department reopened for 12 hours a day in January 2017, but with seemingly little imminent prospect of it returning to its previous round-the-clock service.

The following summer, informal engagement events were held with the public about the healthcare system in Central Lancashire, including the long-term prospects for Chorley’s emergency department.

Twelve months on, in August 2019, a group of medics concluded the facility was not “clinically viable”. Their assessment came after 13 highly-nuanced options for the future of the unit were published, which local NHS commissioners were charged with whittling down.

The resultant shortlist, which was drawn up at the start of 2020, contained three suggestions to be put to public consultation. The two main options recommend the permanent closure of Chorley A&E and its replacement with one of two versions of an urgent care centre.

Although the status quo of a part-time facility was officially left on the table, it was only there to provide a benchmark position against which the proposed alternatives could be judged.

However, before the public consultation could be completed, the pandemic struck – and Chorley’s emergency department was closed for eight months to enable emergency care to be focused on a single site at the Royal Preston.

Just as the consultation process was set to restart in February 2021, then health secretary Matt Hancock made a surprise intervention and ordered that any survey of public opinion must contain a viable option for the unit’s continued operation.

In response, local NHS chiefs opted to abandon the consultation altogether and instead explore the long-term future of the facility as part of a then embryonic bid to build a new Royal Preston.

Later that year, LTH’s then chief executive, Kevin McGee, said the trust was looking at how it could extend the emergency unit’s opening hours in an “incremental” and “safe” way – but no changes ever materialised.

The preferred site for the new Royal Preston was revealed in December 2024 to be in the Farington area of South Ribble, close to the M6 – and around seven miles nearer to Chorley and South Ribble Hospital than the Royal’s current location in Fulwood. However, before the implications of that prospect for the existing Chorley site could be fully explored, the timeframe for opening a new Royal Preston was pushed back by a decade to the early-mid 2040s.