FEARS for the future of a community hospital have been raised after removal vans filled with beds, furniture and hospital equipment were spotted on site following news of a temporary ward closure.

A 14-bed ward at the Lambert Memorial Community Hospital, Thirsk, will be closed until January 2016 when there will be a review of the service by South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, and patients have already started moving out to Northallerton’s Friarage Hospital.

The ward provides mainly end of life care for patients, as well as general rehabilitation, diagnostics and drug administration, but is being closed temporarily due to a shortage of nursing staff.

North Yorkshire County Councillor Gareth Dadd said he was gravely concerned about the apparent speed of the closure after the trust’s chief executive Professor Tricia Hart told members of the authority’s scrutiny of health board its plans on Friday.

He said: “I’m absolutely staggered. It seems to me that South Tees Hospital Trust is running fast and loose with what I regard as a serious issue.

“They need to consider the strength of feeling of the public around this much-loved hospital and give an explanation about why barely 24 working hours after the decision was announced they start to strip the hospital.”

But South Tees Hospital Trust the hospital had not been stripped – it was simply starting the process of moving patients to the Friarage Hospital and was taking only the patients’ beds, chairs, lockers and some equipment.

A spokeswoman said: “There will be between three and five patients moving today into the Ainderby Ward at the Friarage before they then move into the hospital’s Rutson Ward.

“There will be at least three but the other two may be going home. We want to reassure the public that this is not a mass stripping of the hospital – the rest of it will remain open and we have just opened up space for six beds at the Friarage.

“Originally we were hoping to move the patients nearer the end of the month but the staffing problem has got worse and it is a patient safety issue.”

Cllr Dadd has questioned by some of the trust’s 3,500 nurses could not have been used to keep the ward at the Lambert Hospital open.

He said: “It seems to me that we are at the furthest corner of the trust’s real estate, and it inspires no hope or confidence in the future of the ward.”

He added that he intends to invite Prof Hart to attend a public meeting in Thirsk to discuss the temporary closure.