A HUDDERSFIELD pensioner is spearheading a campaign to keep hospital services in the town.
Barbara Farrand, 65, was so angry about proposals to shift services including planned surgery to Calderdale Royal Hospital in Halifax that she single-handedly started her own petition.
Now - less than two months after the changes were announced - the grandmother has collected 4,500 signatures after braving the cold weather and trawling the streets of Huddersfield for support.
Mrs Farrand, of Burniston Drive, Oakes, said: "I am fighting for my age group who don't want to have to travel to Halifax.
"We are the people who have worked since we were 15 and paid our taxes until we retired.
"I am trying to save the surgical wards because older people are going to be worrying about their loved ones getting to Halifax to visit them after operations.
"Part of recuperating from an operation is not having any worries.
"I have been dead against it from the start."
Mrs Farrand - who has also teamed up with the town's Save Our NHS campaign - has even made collecting signatures and dishing out leaflets part of her weekly supermarket shop.
She said: "I have never done anything like this before.
"I only set out to get about 100 signatures. I am very proud of myself.
"But I was so angry when I heard what they were trying to do.
"Surely now the people of Huddersfield have shown how they feel about these proposals."
Mrs Farrand's petitions can be signed at The Bungalow Fisheries at New Hey Road in Oakes, Burniston Drive newsagents and the Head of Steam, Huddersfield.
