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The hospitals they'd send our kids to are already full

6 July 2026 · Save Ormskirk Children's A&E campaign

Moving our children's A&E to Southport won't add a single bed — it just pours more families into hospitals that are already running hot.

When A&E works, you don't notice it. When it's full, you feel every minute. And right now, the hospitals they want our children sent to are already running hot.

Moving Ormskirk's children's A&E 8 miles to Southport doesn't create a single extra bed, nurse or ambulance. It just pours more families into a system that is already stretched thin.

The receiving hospitals are already under strain

This isn't a guess. It's the national picture. In May 2026, only 76% of patients at major (type 1) A&E departments were seen within four hours — well short of the 95% standard the NHS is supposed to meet, a target that hasn't been hit in any month since July 2015.

The specialist children's centre many of our sickest kids rely on, Alder Hey, was built to handle around 150 emergency attendances a day — but in a bad winter that climbs to 300. Ambulances feel it too: the average response to a Category 2 call (which includes many emergencies like a suspected stroke or serious breathing trouble) was 29 minutes in May 2026.

Now ask the obvious question. If the system is this tight today, what happens when you funnel more families through it?

Southport is further from the specialist help kids need

Here's the part the decision-makers keep skating past. Ormskirk is 10–20 minutes closer than Southport to the specialist centres at Alder Hey, Whiston and Aintree. For a critically ill child who needs to be stabilised and moved on, those minutes are not paperwork. They are the difference-makers.

Sending the front door to Southport doesn't just add miles for parents. It adds distance to the specialist care behind that front door — in exactly the moments when distance hurts most.

Moving the pressure isn't the same as fixing it

We all want a health service that works. We love the doctors and nurses at Ormskirk — this fight was never with them. Our fight is with the people who looked at a stretched system and decided the answer was to move our children's emergency care further from home and closer to the strain.

You don't relieve pressure by relocating it. You just decide which families carry it.

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 it — unanimously, across every party. Our MP asked for it. 7,840 of us told the consultation to keep the children's A&E at Ormskirk. That call-in request is still sitting unanswered in Whitehall. Answer it.

Sources: NHS England A&E Attendances and Emergency Admissions statistics, reported via the House of Commons Library and Nuffield Trust: in May 2026 only 76% of attendances at major (type 1) A&E departments were seen within four hours, against a 95% standard that has not been met in any month since July 2015.,Nuffield Trust / House of Commons Library ambulance response data: the average Category 2 ambulance response time in May 2026 was 29 minutes 13 seconds; the 2025/26 year averaged 29 minutes 59 seconds against a 30-minute objective.,Alder Hey Children's Hospital and Alder Hey Children's Charity: the emergency department was designed for around 150 attendances a day but reaches up to 300 in peak winter, and a new Same Day Emergency Care centre is being built to ease pressure.

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