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Yorks activists unite to keep A&E open

NHS trust bosses propose to close unit serving 450,000 people

Hospital workers, campaigners and MPs united yesterday to resist the closure of a vital accident and emergency unit in Yorkshire.

Bosses want to shut the unit at Calderdale Royal Hospital, which serves the 450,000 people of Halifax and surrounding areas in West Yorkshire.

It is run by Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust, which also controls Huddersfield Royal Infirmary covering the neighbouring district of Kirklees.

Trust chiefs have issued a consultation document containing four options for accident and emergency provision, but said their preferred option was to centralise A&E services at Huddersfield Royal, downgrading Calderdale Royal A&E into a minor injuries unit.

The other options are to close both A&E units and switch services to Leeds - which could force some patients to travel up to 30 miles - closing A&E services at Huddersfield and centralising them on Calderdale Royal or keeping both units open.

Halifax Labour MP Linda Riordan said: "The first option should be keeping both accident and emergency units open. It must not be about saving money, but saving lives.

"This plan is a Tory government proposal being passed down and it is all about saving money."

Health service campaigners in the two districts are fighting to keep both A&E units open.

Huddersfield NHS worker and Unite representative Paul Clooney said: "It is vital that campaigners in the two communities of Calderdale and Huddersfield are united in fighting to keep both units open."

Ms Riordan said the accident and emergency unit at Dewsbury General Hospital, run by neighbouring Mid-Yorkshire NHS Trust, was also being targeted, making the threat to emergency treatment even worse.

She is meeting public service union Unison to organise a public meeting.

Calderdale Royal was built in the late 1990s under the government's private finance initiative - or perfect financial incompetence according to campaigners. It cost £64.6 million to build, but by the time it is paid for taxpayers will have handed £773.2m to the privateers who built it - and who will still own it.

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