A DECISION to move key services back to Hartlepool hospital and establish as 24-hour, seven-day-a-week GP-led service has been welcomed by community leaders.

It has also been announced that some urgent NHS services will also return to the University Hospital of North Tees in Stockton

However the overall details of exactly what care will eventually provided at both hospitals and elsewhere in the two towns has not yet been made clear.

That’s because the NHS’s Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) is still going through a business-sensitive, purchasing programme for services and will not release further details until that process is finished.

Senior Hartlepool councillors have welcomed the news that the new Integrated Urgent Care service will soon be delivered at the town’s hospital rather than the One Life facility in Park Road

It will also mean that for the first time in the hospital’s history, there will be a GP led Integrated Urgent Care service delivered 24 hours per day, seven days per week

In recent months Hartlepool Borough Council has campaigned for services to return to Holdforth Road and following a High Court battle recently, it was announced that fertility services would be staying in the town.

Cllr Christopher Akers-Belcher, Labour leader of Hartlepool council and chair of the town’s Health and Wellbeing board, said: “As a council we have been working with the CCG for some time advocating that these urgent care services needed to be commissioned as a single service and that they should be delivered from the Holdforth Road hospital site.”

When asked what the plans would mean for Stockton, a spokeswoman for the CCG explained that only limited information could be released as the purchasing or tendering process continued. However it did appear that more services would also return to Stockton hospital.

She said: “NHS Hartlepool and Stockton Clinical commissioning Group is currently carrying out a procurement for the provision of Integrated Urgent Care services in Hartlepool and Stockton. This service will be delivered from University Hospital of Hartlepool and North Tees Hospital Stockton site in the future.

“We have engaged both local authorities whilst undertaking our review of urgent care services and the proposals to integrate these. We have also been working alongside Hartlepool Borough Council to develop the Hartlepool Local Health and Social Care plan. This clearly demonstrates our on-going commitment to collaborative working.”