Today is D-Day for the planned shake-up of health services in Huddersfield and Calderdale which – if given the go-ahead – will change the way frontline health care is delivered in this area forever.
The Examiner has fought this from the start and we’ve fully backed the #Hands
OffHRI campaign which has brought in many thousands of others who have grave reservations about the proposal.
It’s rare a campaign gets such universal support but this has been overwhelmingly backed by the people of Huddersfield.
(In fact, we can’t think of a single reader who doesn’t think the plan is madness.)
There is simply insufficient information about how much it will cost, where the money will come from, how Huddersfield Royal Infirmary can be reduced from a 450-bed hospital to just 120 beds, how Calderdale Royal Hospital can possibly fill that need and how on earth that very constricted site in Halifax can cope with all the extra patients it would need to serve.
And that’s before we consider how a town the size of Huddersfield could cope without its own A&E.
In short, far too many questions and far too few answers means a far too uncertain future when the health of Huddersfield’s population is at stake.
This must not go ahead.
The future of Huddersfield A&E
will be decided in
