I CANNOT believe the bureaucrats at Warrington shutting the day case unit at Halton Hospital.

It is disgusting.

Once there were more than 240 beds at Halton, which has seen all wards close over the past 15 years.

Even the new critical care unit and the main X-ray department have closed.

Since the so-called merger between Warrington and Halton there seems to have been an agenda to wind down Halton and transfer all of its health facilities to Warrington Hospital.

I estimate that 75 per cent of the health services provided to Halton patients have transferred to Warrington.

The remaining 25 per cent are now to be cut again.

I believe that Halton Hospital will close within the next two years.

All the trust’s debt recovery plans will be well known to senior managers. Halton Hospital is clearly the area where they want to make major savings in an attempt to balance the books.

No services at Warrington have received any cuts whatsoever during the past 15 years.

The trust’s business case for closure is based on its past 15 years’ activity of transferring all to Warrington.

The trust will say it is too costly to keep Halton Hospital open with just a few patients using it.

I think the only building left open will be the new Merseyside and Cheshire Treatment Centre and all other health services will be transferred to Warrington.

The idea was that Halton’s ‘planned’ day operations would be protected at all times while Warrington had an ‘unplanned’ workload.

Now Halton is the subject of even more cuts while Warrington Hospital once again will escape from the cuts at the expense of all of Halton’s residents.

They will have the added expense of additional travelling to Warrington and very expensive car parking charges.

RIP Halton Hospital, 1975 to 2018.

Simon Wainwright

Runcorn