Following contact last week with the chairman of the Save our Hospital (SOH) campaign group we have agreed to open up a new front in the fight to save services at Hartlepool hospital.
I suggested that the group should contact the Parliamentary & Health Service Ombudsman (P&HSO) in order to challenge the Hartlepool & North Tees NHS Trust on its claims that it consulted the public on its proposals to close A&E at the Holdforth Road site.
The proposals had been included in the Trust's Momentum programme which I have insisted was never put before the public for consultation purposes (certainly in East Durham and the villages I represent) and that therefore the decision to close the A&E department was flawed and unsafe. In effect I am challenging the process rather than the end result though the clinical safety of the outcome remains the same.
The chairman of SOH has also contacted the NHS regulator Monitor to raise similar concerns and to ask the regulator to investigate the actions of the Trust in closing services at the hospital despite the public in Hartlepool and East Durham standing firmly opposed to those actions.
Both organisations have confirmed receipt of correspondence from SOH and I will keep you informed of developments as they arise.