A £200m NHS project to improve urgent and emergency care in West Yorkshire has raised more questions about the future of Huddersfield and Halifax hospitals.

It has been confirmed that the region, including Kirklees and Calderdale, had been chosen as a “vanguard” site to pilot new ways of working for patients who dial 999.

Health chiefs want to reduce the pressure on A&E departments and provide a wider network of treatment choices and solutions.

NHS England said “street triage” and mobile services would be brought in along with rapid crisis response services for mental health patients.

The West Yorkshire scheme, the biggest of eight urgent and emergency vanguard schemes across England, comes just a couple of months before Calderdale and Huddersfield health bosses are due to reveal proposals for their own major shake-up of hospital services, including emergency and urgent care.

But health sources have told The Examiner that rumours of no A&E in Huddersfield or Halifax are unfounded.

Chris Dowse, the chair of West Yorkshire Urgent and Emergency Care Network, said the vanguard scheme would not directly influence Calderdale and Huddersfield reconfiguration plans.

She said: “We want to use this opportunity to build on what we have been doing for the last year and inject more pace and scale into it.

“I am also delighted that our partners from Yorkshire Ambulance Service will be working with us to increase the pace of change which will see our ambulance services recognised by patients as a mobile treatment service rather than just a means of transporting them to hospital for emergency care.”

A spokeswoman for Calderdale Clinical Commissioning Group confirmed discussions about moving to a model with one A&E supported by three minor injury units had resumed.

But she said talks were ongoing and the views of “stakeholders” were still being considered.

Last year, hospital bosses admitted they would prefer to run just one emergency department, probably in Huddersfield.

It is thought it would be backed up with three so called Urgent Care Centres, most likely at Todmorden, Holme Valley Memorial Hospital and at Calderdale Royal itself.

Confirmation of the strategy is expected in the early autumn.

Professor Keith Willett, NHS England’s Director of Acute Care, said the West Yorkshire vanguard would see GPs, paramedics, pharmacists, mental health teams, and other community services work with hospitals to treat accidents and emergencies.

NHS England’s Director of Acute Care Professor Keith Willett

But how the new services will affect current systems of responding to accidents and emergencies have not been explained to the public or the press.

Huddersfield MP Barry Sheerman, who has twice warned his sources have said Huddersfield and Halifax could lose their full casualty departments, said: “What we’ve always been worried about is having no serious A&E service in Kirklees and Calderdale. If this means that is happening I won’t be very happy.

“But we do all have to wake up to the fact that a very different NHS is required.

“People are routinely living to 100 and there’s much more pressure on resources.

“But the one thing we have to do is change it in consultation with and the co-operation of local people.

“My constituents would not be very happy if the only place they could go to A&E was Leeds.”

Campaigners bidding to block the expected moves to downgrade Calderdale Royal Hospital A&E have slammed the lack of transparency over the plans.

Jenny Shepherd, Chair of Calderdale and Kirklees 999 Call for the NHS, said: “Whatever effects the new Urgent and Emergency Care Vanguard scheme may or may not have on Calderdale Royal Hospital and our GP and community health care services, one thing is sure.

“There has been no democratic accountability about the process and the public have been kept in the dark about it.”