Have your operation on the Town Hall car park!

Date published: 22/05/2008

Care UK has submitted a planning application, backed by the Primary Care Trust, to perform general surgery in a mobile unit on the car park at Rochdale Town Hall for the next seven years!

The PCT state: “We are bringing services out of hospitals and right in the heart of our communities providing patients with care closer to home.”

Councillor Jean Ashworth has called this "an insult", she said: "What an insult, they must think we are all stupid in Rochdale, they are taking vital services away from the Infirmary with promises of more care in the community services - as yet to be seen.

"Pardon me for being daft but I thought these fantastic 'Lift Centres' were going to provide minor surgery services. Has that now changed to a car park operation at the back of the Town Hall - really handy to pop on a bus home after your operation?

"Eight years ago services were moved from Birch Hill with the fantastic promise of phase 2 at the Infirmary. Then, although we the public already knew it, they decided that the Infirmary site wasn’t big enough to accommodate that promise, so we had a reconfiguration costing thousands of pounds and again they decided to downgrade our services at the Infirmary, with promises yet again for more care closer to home, more care in the community, more promises they just can’t deliver.

"I think Rochdale Town Hall deserves better than becoming a 'car park surgery' to provide care to a private out of town company, moreover I think we deserve more respect than to think we can be operated on in the back of a mobile unit on the Town Hall car park

"We deserve better so does the Town Hall."