Final public meeting over NHS shake-up of hospital services

Health chiefs are hosting their final consultation event next week on plans to downgrade the hospital’s maternity and paediatric services which could mean mothers to be in parts of the Yorkshire Dales facing journeys of up to 50 miles to the James Cook University Hospital in Middlesbrough.

It is the last of nine public meetings which have taken place over the proposed changes, which have been described as “deeply concerning” by the Richmondshire MP William Hague.

Last month, Mr Hague was a speaker at a major protest rally in Northallerton alongside Amanda Owen, a mother-of-six who lives on a remote Swaledale farm and who has given birth to three of her babies on the roadside while trying to get to hospital.

“We just have to keep trying,” Mrs Owen said yesterday ahead of the final consultation event at Bedale Hall on Monday.

“Sometimes you tend to get changes like this slipped in without people noticing but there has been a fantastic response to this.”

The meeting will be hosted by leading GPs, hospital clinicians and senior NHS managers from the Hambleton, Richmondshire and Whitby Clinical Commissioning Group and South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.

Dr Vicky Pleydell, a local GP and the shadow accountable officer for the commissioning group, said: “As a group of GPs, we share local people’s strength of feeling for services at the Friarage Hospital.

“We are determined to ensure it continues to be the main focus for hospital-based healthcare in Hambleton and Richmondshire.

“This is the last of nine public events we have held to allow people to gain a greater understanding of the current situation, how it has come about and what options lie before us.”