The Ambulance Clock Is Already Against Us
Category 2 ambulances already average nearly 30 minutes against an 18-minute target — so why move our children's A&E eight miles further away?
The 999 call goes out. Somewhere in West Lancashire, a parent is on their knees next to a child who has stopped breathing. From that second, everything is a race. And here is the hard truth we have to face: the clock is already losing.
The 18-minute promise that isn't being kept
Category 2 covers many of the emergencies that send an ambulance racing to a home — a suspected stroke, a serious injury, a child who is seriously unwell. The national standard says crews should reach these calls in an average of 18 minutes.
They aren't. In May 2026 the average Category 2 response time across England was 29 minutes and 13 seconds — more than eleven minutes over target. Across the whole of 2025/26 the average was 29 minutes and 59 seconds. These aren't our numbers. They come from the Nuffield Trust's tracking of official NHS ambulance data.
So before a single mile is driven to hospital, our families are already waiting far longer than the system promises for help to arrive.
Now add eight more miles
Here is what the decision on 13 March 2026 does. It moves our children's A&E from Ormskirk to Southport — eight miles further away for most of West Lancashire. Ormskirk sits 10 to 20 minutes closer to the specialist centres at Alder Hey, Whiston and Aintree than Southport does.
Think about what that means once a child is finally in the ambulance. The pick-up was already slow. Now the drive to the front door of A&E gets longer too. Every extra minute is stacked on top of a clock that is already running behind. For a child who is fighting to breathe, minutes are not paperwork. They are everything.
We are not angry at the crews. We love the paramedics, the doctors and the nurses — they are running as fast as an overstretched service will let them. Our fight is with the people who looked at these very numbers and decided to make the journey longer, not shorter.
This is a move, not a closure — and it's the wrong move
Let's be precise, because precision is what protects us. Ormskirk Hospital is not closing. The children's A&E is being moved to Southport. That distinction matters — and it makes the decision harder to defend, not easier. You do not fix slow response times by pushing the destination further away.
What we're asking for
The Health Secretary must call in this decision before any work begins. Lancashire County Council's health scrutiny committee already voted unanimously, across every party, to demand exactly that. That request still hasn't been answered. When the ambulance clock is already this far behind, moving our children's A&E further away isn't a saving. It's a risk our kids shouldn't have to carry.
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