Campaigner's alternative health services plan

* Martin Crumpton wants to see the River Lodge site turned into a big car park. 

A LLANGOLEN campaigner has come up with his alternatives to current plans for the future of health services in the town.

Martin Crumpton says that instead of selling off the former Cottage Hospital in Abbey Road to a housing association it should be retained by the health board and used as the base for a range of health services currently fighting for space at the GP centre in Regent Street.

And he reckons the site off Mill Street where the old River Lodge is now in the final stages of demolition should be used not for a £5 million new health centre as planned but as the large car park which Llangollen needs.


Mr Crumpton’s suggestions come in the preface to a public petition which he is asking the area’s residents to sign before sending it off to health and council chiefs.

The petition form is headed “Save Our Surgery” and has a link from his Facebook page.
 

In it he says: “This is our chance in a lifetime to solve the parking problem.”
 

Mr Crumpton’s plan is to:

· Reopen the Cottage Hospital, (pictured right) complete with beds and the second floor brought back into use.    

· Relieve pressure on the Regent Street health centre by moving ancillary service such as district nurses, minor injuries unit, phlebotomy and physiotherapy back there.

 

· Make the River Lodge site into the large car park “Llangollen needs”.
 

He claims the advantages are that current GP surgery stays within walking distance for the majority of patients, “unlike the new site” and that the traffic pinch point problem where Mill Street narrows and makes for a “dangerous access” to the new health centre site, “simply disappears”.

Mr Crumpton says further benefits of his plan are that turning the River Lodge site into a big car park will “stimulate business and tourism in Llangollen, creating jobs and wealth” and that Llangollen “gets what it needs instead of what outsiders think we should have”.

The petition can be seen at: https://www.dropbox.com/s/8bf6wa3xly4wa40/AAposter.pdf