18,178 Children Live Here Now. 680 New Homes Say More Are Coming.
West Lancashire isn't losing families — it's about to gain hundreds more. So why is its children's A&E being moved further away, not strengthened?
Forget the map for a second. Look at the register instead: 18,178 children aged 0-14 already live in West Lancashire. That's who loses their nearest children's A&E if this decision goes ahead — and the number is about to grow, not shrink.
The children who are already here
According to Lancashire County Council's own population data, 18,178 children aged 0-14 live in West Lancashire: 5,510 aged 0-4, 5,934 aged 5-9 and 6,734 aged 10-14 (Lancashire County Council Business Intelligence, West Lancashire population profile, October 2024). Including teenagers, 26,029 residents — 21.6% of the borough — are aged 0-19. Every one of them is a child who, today, has a children's A&E 8am-midnight at Ormskirk. Under this decision, all of them would have it 8 miles away in Southport instead.
More families are moving in, not out
West Lancashire Borough Council isn't planning for a shrinking population. On 12 November 2025, the council approved a development plan to deliver 680 new homes across 20 schemes, part of a £164 million programme including the wider Skelmersdale regeneration masterplan (West Lancashire Borough Council, 12 November 2025). New estates mean new families, and new families mean more toddlers, more school runs, more 2am temperatures and more trips to A&E — not fewer. Nobody has explained how moving the children's A&E further away squares with a borough that is actively building homes for more of them.
The numbers were never the argument for moving it
None of this is new information to the decision-makers. The 13-week public consultation ran from July to October 2025 and drew more than 7,840 responses — and keeping the children's A&E at Ormskirk was the most popular option among the people who actually live here, with their actual children, on these actual roads. Southport was named the "preferred option" before that consultation even opened, and keeping both sites was ruled out beforehand too.
Moving the door, not shrinking the need
To be precise: Ormskirk Hospital is not closing. Its children's A&E is being moved to Southport, 8 miles away, in a £33 million project approved on 13 March 2026 and not due to finish until at least 2029. Southport is 10-20 minutes further from the specialist units at Alder Hey, Whiston and Aintree that the sickest children get sent on to. We love the doctors and nurses at Ormskirk — our fight is with the decision-makers who approved this before asking, ignored the answer when they did, and still haven't responded to Lancashire County Council's unanimous, cross-party request that the Health Secretary call it in.
What we're asking for
18,178 children live here now. Hundreds more are on the way. We're asking the Health Secretary to call in this decision before a single one of them loses their nearest children's A&E.
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