The new Health Secretary has been urged to “do better than his predecessor” and visit struggling Kirklees hospitals.

Requests by MPs and campaigners to get Jeremy Hunt to visit Huddersfield Royal Infirmary or Dewsbury Hospital, have fallen on deaf ears over the past three years.

With Mr Hunt now replaced by Matt Hancock, shadow health minister and Dewsbury MP Paula Sherriff, has called on him to see the issues for himself.

A decision on the future of HRI is still pending, while the impact of downgrades to Dewsbury are just starting to be felt by patients and staff.

Amid reports that hospital admissions have increased by a third in just six years in Kirklees and Calderdale, Miss Sherriff has again warned of the danger of downgrading local hospitals and the need to act quickly over decisions being made about the future of local NHS services.

She said: “After pressing him to visit for over 18 months to come and see our local hospitals for himself, Jeremy Hunt has moved on to pastures new, without ever keeping his word to visit and leaving his successor Matt Hancock with very little time to get to grips with plans affecting our local NHS.

Paula Sherriff, MP for Dewsbury

“With decisions on the future of HRI imminent, and mounting evidence that our local NHS cannot safely achieve nationally imposed targets, it is imperative that Mr Hancock hears from those staff, patients and health campaigners who have deep concerns over both the recent downgrades at Dewsbury and impending changes at Huddersfield.”

After blocking hospital chiefs initial transformation plans last May, former Health Secretary Mr Hunt gave them just three months – until 10 August – to respond to a report by the Independent Reconfiguration Panel that highlighted “failings which call into question the benefits of this scheme and the way in which the process has been managed.”

It is not known when the public will hear about how HRI bosses have adapted their plan.

So far they have been very tight-lipped about their new strategy – saying only that they will take a “phased approach.”

After a meeting of Kirklees and Calderdale Joint Health Scrutiny Committee early last month, that was supposed to probe what efforts were being made to satisfy Mr Hunt’s concerns, campaigners and councillors came away frustrated as virtually no new information was revealed.