No car. No train. And soon, no nearby children's A&E.
In parts of Skelmersdale, four in ten households have no car — and the town has no railway station. Moving our children's A&E to Southport hits them hardest.
Here's a question nobody at the decision table seems to have asked: how is a mum in Skelmersdale with no car supposed to get her sick child to Southport?
Because in huge parts of our borough, there is no car. The 2021 Census says so. In Skelmersdale South East, 40.2% of households have no car or van. In Skelmersdale Central it's 33.8%. Skelmersdale East, 33.2%. Skelmersdale West, 27.3%. Across West Lancashire as a whole, 8,728 households — 18% — have no car at all.
And Skelmersdale is the largest town in North West England with no railway station. The trains stopped in 1956. Seventy years of promises later, our town of nearly 40,000 people still can't catch one.
So how does that journey actually work?
If you have a car, Southport is 8 miles further wrong than it needs to be. If you don't, you're looking at a bus. Journey planners put the direct bus between Skelmersdale and Southport at around 45 minutes to an hour each way — when it's running, and running on time. With a feverish toddler. Possibly at night, possibly in winter, possibly with other children in tow.
That's not a health service. That's an obstacle course.
The people hit hardest were heard the least
This is the part that makes us angriest. The families most likely to depend on Ormskirk's children's A&E — the ones without a car, without a train, without a spare £30 for a taxi each way — are exactly the families this decision punishes most. 7,840 of us responded to the consultation, and keeping children's A&E at Ormskirk was the most popular answer. The NHS had already named Southport as its preferred option before it asked us. Then a joint committee approved the £33 million move anyway.
We love the doctors and nurses at Ormskirk. Our fight is not with them. It's with decision-makers who looked at a town where four in ten households in some neighbourhoods can't drive anywhere — and moved the children's A&E further away.
What we're asking for
Lancashire County Council's health scrutiny committee voted unanimously, cross-party, to ask the Health Secretary to call this decision in. That request is still sitting unanswered. So we keep asking, louder: call it in before a single brick moves. Sign the petition. Share this with someone in Skem who'd never see it otherwise. Our kids shouldn't need a car to reach emergency care.
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