They Promised Skelmersdale a Fix in May. It's September. Still Nothing.
NHS bosses dangled an upgraded urgent care centre for Skelmersdale as a sweetener for losing the children's A&E — four months on, there's still no timeline, no funding announcement, and no answer.
We don't do this for headlines. We do it because our kids deserve the truth about what's actually been promised — and what hasn't.
Back in May, as opposition to moving Ormskirk's children's A&E to Southport kept growing, NHS Lancashire and South Cumbria's chief commissioning officer, Craig Harris, told the local paper that Ormskirk Hospital "will remain open and continue to provide key services," and that the ICB was "exploring the possibility of upgrading the walk-in centre in Skelmersdale to an urgent treatment centre."
That sounded, to a lot of worried parents, like an olive branch. Skelmersdale is one of the areas hit hardest by this move — its families already face some of the longest journeys to Southport of anywhere in West Lancashire. An upgraded urgent treatment centre, properly funded and properly staffed, could have been a genuine partial answer.
Four Months of Nothing
It's now the end of September. We've found no public confirmation that this upgrade has been funded, scheduled, or even formally scoped. No business case. No consultation. No date. Just a sentence from May, repeated in press coverage, and then silence.
That silence isn't new. It's the same pattern as the call-in request itself: Lancashire County Council's health scrutiny committee voted unanimously in March to ask the Health Secretary to call in the whole decision. That request still hasn't been answered. Six months on, our council, our MP, and our community are still waiting for a reply to a letter.
A vague promise about Skelmersdale, made in the same week as a decision nobody in this town asked for, starts to look less like a plan and more like a pressure valve — something said to take the heat off a decision that had already been made before the consultation even started.
Why Skelmersdale Can't Wait On A Maybe
Ormskirk's children's A&E is not closing — it is being moved to Southport, 8 miles away, at a cost of £33 million, over a minimum of three years. Ormskirk currently sits 10–20 minutes closer than Southport to the specialist children's centres at Alder Hey, Whiston and Aintree that the sickest kids sometimes need to reach. Those minutes don't stop mattering just because a press release mentioned a walk-in centre.
We love the doctors and nurses who currently keep our children's A&E running. Our fight isn't with them — it's with decision-makers who consulted 7,840 families, heard that keeping Ormskirk's children's A&E was the most popular option, and went ahead with their preferred plan anyway. If Skelmersdale really is getting a new urgent treatment centre, prove it. Publish the business case. Give us a date.
What we're asking for
We're asking the Health Secretary to formally call in this decision before any work begins — a request that has now gone unanswered for six months. And we're asking NHS Lancashire and South Cumbria ICB to either publish a funded, dated plan for the Skelmersdale urgent treatment centre they promised in May, or admit publicly that it was never more than a talking point.
Spread the word — share this briefing: