Council leaders urge Health Secretary to intervene on immediate A&E threat

The leaders of Shropshire Council and Telford & Wrekin Council have together written to Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt urging him to give urgent support to maintain A&E services at the area’s two acute hospitals until the Future Fit process is complete.

Malcolm Pate and Shaun Davies warn that services at both the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital and Princess Royal Hospital are under threat due to a lack of qualified consultants to maintain their safe operation.

The two leaders ask Mr Hunt to intervene as soon as possible to broker and secure additional consultant support from neighbouring clinical networks to enable services to be properly maintained.

The Future Fit process, underway since 2013, is looking at how to reconfigure hospital services in Shropshire and Telford and Wrekin.

The leaders say that whatever the outcome of this, it would be a number of years before this can be implemented, and the uncertainty that this creates is causing difficulties in the recruitment and retention of key staff.

Councillors Pate and Davies say in the letter: “As the Leaders of our respective councils, we believe it is vital for the safety of our residents that the A&E Departments at both hospitals are properly staffed and maintained in their current form until the outcome of the ongoing acute reconfiguration is fully realised. This will only be possible if additional consultants are made available.”

The pair end by offering to meet with the Secretary of State on the matter and request that Mr Hunt takes immediate action to address this.