'Save our health services' campaign gets under way

* The KLHS leaflet to be distributed across Llangollen. 

The campaign to protect health services in Llangollen is under way.

And its hard-hitting main message is “We’ve got less than a month to stop Llangollen being closed”.

As exclusively revealed by llanblogger, at a public meeting in the Hand Hotel last Thursday an action group was formed to safeguard health services in the town.

* The new group's website. 

Named Keep Llangollen Health Services (KLHS), its aim is to halt controversial proposals by the Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board which include closing the town's Cottage Hospital and replacing it with a new primary care health centre on another site in the town. 

Members of the new group are deeply worried the new facility will take years to complete and will not include the in-patient beds or minor injuries unit currently offered by the hospital on Abbey Road.

The community hospital, which the health board says is outdated and in need of replacement, also provides a range of vital health services, such blood testing, and campaigners are concerned about whether these will continue to be provided locally during an expected gap of two or three years between it closing and a new centre opening.

KLHS has just announced it has organised a follow-up public meeting, in the Hand Hotel on Monday, October 15, starting at 7pm, when it will set out its action plans for the public, invite speakers and orchestrate a letter-writing campaign seeking the support of local residents, opinion-formers, politicians and the media. 

The group has also set up its own dedicated website – see it at www.llangollenhospitalcampaign.wordpress.com – and email address, keepllanhealthservice@gmail.com 

It has printed hundreds of copies of a leaflet – with English and Welsh language versions – which it is to distribute across the town and surrounding areas.   

KLHS will  liaise with other groups opposing health service changes, such as the one in Flint which recently organised a march through the streets of the town by 1,500 people fighting the closure of their own community hospital. 

The group is also collecting personal accounts from local people about how important the Cottage Hospital has been in their lives over the years.  

A KLHS spokesperson said: “We’ve got less than a month to stop Llangollen Hospital being closed. 

“The health board wants to permanently close all the hospital beds in Llangollen, sell the hospital and only then apply for planning permission for a new health centre without any beds. 

“Nursing and GP-based hospital care in Llangollen for frail and terminally-ill people would cease to exist.”