Longer Journeys, Lost Minutes: What The Evidence Shows
The UK's biggest study on moving A&E departments found ambulance journeys got longer and the clock started against patients — here's what the evidence actually shows.
When they told us the children's A&E is moving from Ormskirk to Southport, eight miles away, the people behind the decision said the extra distance wouldn't matter much. The evidence says otherwise.
We went looking for what actually happens when an A&E is moved further from the families who rely on it. Not opinions. Studies. Here's what we found.
Longer journeys, measured in real minutes
The biggest UK study on this is the closED study, funded by the National Institute for Health Research. It tracked five emergency departments in England that were closed or downgraded between 2009 and 2011 — places like Newark, Hartlepool and Rochdale — and compared them against similar areas that kept their A&E.
The finding was blunt. There was strong evidence of a large increase in the time from a 999 call to arriving at hospital in the areas that lost their department. Most of that extra time came from the journey between the scene and the hospital door — exactly the stretch that gets longer when you move the A&E eight miles down the road.
For a child struggling to breathe, or a toddler after a bad fall, those minutes aren't a statistic. They're the difference we spend our lives trying not to think about.
A system already stretched thin
Moving our children's A&E doesn't happen in a calm, fully-staffed NHS. It happens in this one.
In 2024, the Royal College of Emergency Medicine linked more than 16,600 deaths in England to long A&E waits — a 20% jump on the year before, and around 320 lives every single week. Their estimate is stark: one extra death for every 72 patients who wait eight to twelve hours before being admitted. More than 1.7 million people waited twelve hours or longer that year.
That is the system our kids are being pushed further into. Southport's A&E, Alder Hey, Whiston, Aintree — all already carrying more than they should. Adding distance and adding load at the same time isn't a plan. It's a gamble with other people's children.
We love the doctors and nurses at Ormskirk. None of this is about them. It's about the people who named Southport their "preferred option" before a single parent was asked — and who have ignored the answer 7,840 of us gave in the consultation.
What we're asking for
The Health Secretary must formally call in this decision before any work begins. Lancashire County Council's scrutiny committee asked for exactly that — unanimously, across every party. That request is still sitting unanswered.
The evidence is on the table. Read it. Then keep our children's A&E where our children are.
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