Senior A&E doctors do not want to work at Huddersfield Royal Infirmary or Calderdale Royal Hospital because their emergency departments are so understaffed.

That’s the frank admission from Dr Mark Davies, the head of emergency medicine at Calderdale and Huddersfield Foundation Trust, which runs the two hospitals.

The College of Emergency Medicine recommends that a single emergency department should have at least 10 emergency medicine consultants.

But the trust’s two A&E departments are sometimes staffed by as few as four consultants.

Dr Mark Davies, clinical lead of A&E at Calderdale and Huddersfield Foundation Trust

And despite a recruitment drive the trust has been unable to fill the vacancies, Dr Davies told a health scrutiny panel in Huddersfield.

The Kirklees and Calderdale Joint Health Scrutiny Committee has been discussing a hospital shake-up plan which could close Huddersfield’s A&E and centralise emergency care at Calderdale Royal Hospital (CRH), Halifax.

Dr Davies said a recent attempt to recruit consultants to the trust had yielded one application – from Qatar.

The A&E chief, who supports the shake-up said: “We have funding for 14 posts. We can only fill 10.

“That means there are only five consultants working on each site.

“We had an advert for a consultant and we had one response from someone who lived in Qatar.

“People don’t want to work in our organisation because we’re working with four or five emergency consultants.”

Under Right Care Right Time Right Place, Huddersfield Royal Infirmary (HRI) will be demolished and replaced with a smaller hospital which will focus on planned care but crucially, it will not have full emergency services.

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CRH will be expanded to concentrate on emergency care and will have, for many Huddersfield residents, the nearest emergency care centre.

WATCH: Thousands march to protest against hospital shake up

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The plan, health bosses say, will address the trust’s shortage of doctors and nurses together with its reliance on expensive agency staff.

But former trust eye consultant Colin Hutchinson said the plan to reduce staffing problems by centralising emergency care was akin to BBC political satire, Yes, Minister.

Mr Hutchinson told the panel: “Sir Humphrey would be proud...

“The problems will not be relieved by hospital configuration.”