Nearly Six Months. Two Requests. Still No Answer.
171 days after a unanimous, cross-party vote and a formal ask from our own MP, the Health Secretary still hasn't said yes or no to calling in the Ormskirk decision.
On 31 March, every party on Lancashire County Council's health scrutiny committee agreed on something for once. They voted unanimously to ask the Health Secretary to call in the decision to move our children's A&E from Ormskirk to Southport. West Lancashire MP Ashley Dalton asked for the same thing.
That was 171 days ago. Today there is still no answer. Not yes. Not no. Nothing.
Two requests, one silence
A cross-party vote from elected councillors is not a protest letter — it's the system's own watchdog saying something looks wrong. Add a sitting MP asking for the same thing, on top of a consultation where 7,840 people responded and keeping the children's A&E at Ormskirk was the most popular option, and you have about as strong a case for intervention as local health politics produces. Five and a half months on, neither request has had a public answer.
The file has already survived one change of minister
The call-in request was addressed to Wes Streeting. He resigned as Health Secretary in May 2026, and James Murray took over the department days later. That means this request has now sat, unanswered, through two different secretaries of state. A change of minister might explain a short delay. It doesn't explain 171 days and counting under two different people holding the same job.
What the government's own rulebook says
According to a legal briefing on the current call-in rules from law firm Mills & Reeve, the Health Secretary is expected to use the call-in power "sparingly" and reserve it for "exceptional situations" — and councils have to show they've tried to resolve concerns locally before they ask for one at all. Lancashire's committee did exactly that groundwork before voting. If a unanimous, cross-party call-in request backed by a local MP and a consultation result the NHS didn't want isn't the kind of "exceptional situation" that rulebook has in mind, it's hard to know what would be. Either way, exceptional or not, the rules don't say the request can simply go unacknowledged for months.
What we're asking for
We're not asking James Murray to promise an outcome. We're asking for something much smaller: confirmation, in writing, that the call-in request has been received, and a date by which he'll respond to it. Families in Ormskirk, Skelmersdale, Burscough and across West Lancashire are entitled to know whether the person with the power to pause this £33 million move is even looking at the file. Silence isn't a decision. It's just more waiting for parents who've already waited long enough.
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