THERE are alternatives to downgrading services at the Friarage Hospital, in Northallerton, a working party has concluded.

A team of eight people from the NHS, North Yorkshire County Council’s scrutiny of health committee and William Hague’s researcher Anthony Mangnall recently visited Horton General Hospital, in Banbury.

The Oxfordshire hospital is similar to the Friarage in terms of its size and the difficulties it faced in maintaining its consultant-led maternity and children’s services.

Councillor John Blackie, a member of the county council’s health committee, said that, rather than moving the services to the bigger John Radcliffe Hospital nearby, Horton’s paediatrics services were maintained by sharing 16 consultants with the other hospital.

Medics are rotated between the two centres in teams of four, while its maternity services are run on similar lines.

The solution allows consultants to maintain their skills working in a large, busy hospital and a quieter one. It also provides the two hospitals with the necessary mix of skills and training among its staff.

Coun Blackie said such an arrangement would be apt for the Friarage, where there was a more rural population facing much greater difficulties in reaching hospital.

“The mention that some of Mr Hague’s constituents would have to travel 60 miles each way to have a baby, in hostile weathers and on substandard roads, left those from Banbury in complete shock,” he added.

“While some there might have to travel a maximum of 30 miles to get to the John Radcliffe Hospital, this would be on a choice of two decent dual-carriageway roads, and in a much less severe climate than that experienced in the Dales.”

Foreign Secretary and Richmondshire MP William Hague has pledged to continue pressing the health secretary and cabinet colleague Andrew Lansley to maintain key services at the Friarage Hospital following a protest march through Northallerton involving about 4,000 people.

Officials at the 200-bed hospital, which takes in the North York Moors and the Yorkshire Dales to the borders of York and Darlington, are proposing to downgrade inpatient children’s services to a day unit and turn a fullservice maternity department into a midwife-led birthing unit.

It followed a visit by independent experts who warned the current arrangements were unsustainable because of acute medical staffing shortages.

􀁧 The final public meeting on the future of the Friarage takes place at Bedale Hall on Monday, June 18.