They Want To Send Our Kids To A Hospital That's Already Missing Its Own Target
In June 2026 the trust being asked to take over our children's emergency care missed the four-hour A&E target by more than 20 points — before a single extra patient arrives.
Imagine driving eight extra miles in an emergency — to a hospital that's already struggling to see its own patients on time.
The Numbers From The Hospital We're Being Sent To
In June 2026, Mersey and West Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust — the trust that runs both Ormskirk and Southport hospitals — saw just 72.6% of A&E patients within four hours, according to NHS England data. That's 22 points short of the NHS's own 95% standard, and short of the interim 78% goal too. In that single month, 403 patients waited more than 12 hours to be seen, out of 25,424 attendances.
This is the hospital our children's A&E is being moved to. Not a spare, uncrowded department with room to grow — a department already missing its own numbers, before a single extra child arrives from Ormskirk.
It's Not Just Southport
The strain isn't local, it's national — and that's exactly why local capacity matters more, not less. Across England, only 59% of patients at major (type 1) A&E departments were seen within four hours in 2024/25, according to the King's Fund. NHS England has since set an interim target of just 78% by March 2026 — itself a long way short of the original 95% standard.
Nationally, the Royal College of Emergency Medicine's tracker found that in its most recent reported month, around 1 in 12 patients at major departments waited 12 hours or more to be seen.
Moving The Door Doesn't Add Capacity
Nobody is claiming Ormskirk Hospital is closing. It isn't — and precision matters here. But moving the children's A&E to Southport doesn't create a single extra cubicle, nurse or doctor. It just concentrates more demand on a department that's already missing its own target. We love the doctors and nurses at Ormskirk and at Southport. Our fight isn't with them. It's with a decision made before the consultation even finished, that ignored what 7,840+ of us said, and that a cross-party council committee has already asked the Health Secretary to call in.
What We're Asking For
We're not asking for a miracle. We're asking the Health Secretary to do the one thing within his power right now: call in this decision before £33 million is spent moving a service to a hospital that can't yet cope with what it already has. That call-in request has been sitting unanswered since late March. Every month of silence is a month closer to 2029 — and a month further from the answer 7,840 of us gave.
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