The Families Who Can Least Afford the Extra Eight Miles
New deprivation data shows West Lancashire has pockets as poor as anywhere in England — and research shows deprived families already face the biggest barriers getting a child to A&E.
Some of our neighbourhoods are doing fine. Others are not. That's not an opinion — it's what the government's own deprivation data says. And it matters, because the families in the second group are exactly the ones who'll struggle most when our children's A&E moves 8 miles away.
What the deprivation data actually shows
The English Indices of Deprivation 2025 rank almost 34,000 small neighbourhoods across England on income, employment, education, health, crime, housing and living environment. West Lancashire as a whole sits toward the less-deprived end of the national table. But that headline hides the real picture. Within our district there are pockets that fall inside the most deprived 10% of neighbourhoods in the whole of England — sitting a few miles from some of the most prosperous commuter streets in the county. That's not us guessing. That's the Community Foundation for Lancashire's own reading of the official 2025 figures: "sharp contrasts between more prosperous commuter areas and communities facing income and employment challenges."
Averages hide people. A borough-wide statistic that says "we're fine" can still mean a street where getting a sick child to hospital is genuinely hard.
Why distance hits deprived families hardest
This isn't just about deprivation in the abstract — it's about who actually gets to A&E, and how. A recent study into socioeconomic inequality and emergency care access in the UK found that families in more deprived areas are less likely to arrive at A&E through a structured GP or NHS 111 referral — and that this gap in how people reach emergency care, more than deprivation itself, is what drives worse outcomes. Take away the nearest option and add complexity — a second bus, a taxi you can't afford, a shift you can't leave — and you're not inconveniencing a family. You're adding a barrier to a system that already has too many.
It's not abstract elsewhere either. Separate research funded by the Health Foundation found that people living in England's most deprived 20% of areas are admitted to hospital as an emergency for infectious disease at almost double the rate of those in the least deprived 20%. Deprived communities already lean on emergency care more, not less. They're the ones this move can least afford to fail.
The decision didn't ask this question
Nothing in the 13 March 2026 decision to move our children's A&E to Southport weighed which streets have a car and which don't, which parents can drop everything for an 8-mile round trip and which can't. The 13-week consultation that ran through summer and autumn 2025 drew over 7,840 responses, and keeping the A&E at Ormskirk was the most popular answer. It was overruled anyway.
What we're asking for: the Health Secretary must call in this decision — the request has sat unanswered since late March. Before a single brick moves, someone with the power to stop this needs to ask who actually loses when the nearest children's A&E gets eight miles harder to reach. We love the doctors and nurses who look after our kids at Ormskirk. Our fight is with the people who signed this off without asking that question.
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