Friends of Our Hospital

Posted By: Jean Ashworth
Date Posted: 23/07/2010

Friends of Our Hospital held a meeting on Monday evening 19th July at St Mary’s Presbytery, it was really well attended and new members came along to join the group.

The Friends of Our Hospital was formed over six years ago by Sir Cyril Smith and Paul Rowen and Chaired by Father Arthur Nearey we came together as a non political all party pressure group with Councillors Ashley Dearnley & Jane Gartside myself and members of the public to challenge the reconfiguration plans to downgrade the Rochdale Infirmary into an Urgent Care Centre and held many public meetings at the Town Hall, Touchstones and Littleborough all were well attended and some very vocal meetings were held.
We took a 55,000 named petition to Downing Street organised by the then MP Paul Rowen a very supportive and active member of the group and thankfully he still is as Paul did and continues to do a lot of work to save our services.
As is Sir Cyril even though he is unable to attend meetings He still has very strong views regarding the downgrading and closures and continues his support for the Friends of Our Hospital. We delivered the peoples voices in the Borough of Rochdale to number 10 Downing Street sadly it was ignored and the plans continued to downgrade our wonderful Hospital with many promises of a Better future.

Over the last 6-7 years many of the plans for the Rochdale Infirmary have been changed to suit the trust’s ambitions rather than the publics views or concerns, many promises that were made then are now broken, many goalposts have and continue to be moved without consultation millions of pounds has been lost and wasted by the Pennine Acute Trust and the PCT which should be accounted for!
These are serious causes for concern.
No changes should be made on the plans by the Pennine Acute or PCT without full consultation to the Health Overview & Scrutiny and Joint Health Overview & Scrutiny every thing Rochdale was promised has been changed.
We need to be informed of these changes in advance not to read about it in the local media.
We plan to lobby our Health Minister on the legality of the ever changing goalposts of the original plans “Making it Better, Healthy Futures” as they are doing it without any consultation outside of their own organisation!
Join the “Friends of Our Hospital” meetings are held on the last Thursday of every month at St Mary’s Presbytery Littleborough 6.45 pm.

Local Services for Local People

Councillor Jean Ashworth