TOMORROW I am meeting the county's NHS leaders, with other Shropshire MPs, for what promises to be a feisty meeting. We had intended to have a briefing on the recommendations emerging from the long-running Future Fit exercise.

Now it is shaping up? to be more of a grand inquisition, to hold them to account for what appears to be descending into an un-Fit for purpose exercise.

Information coming out over the past week suggests the Future Fit proposals to review A&E delivery in Shropshire are not going to deliver the improvements expected at a cost which makes the upheaval worth the investment.

NHS England have sent the proposals back to the drawing board, until next summer, so plans for future healthcare in Shropshire are once again up in the air.

There is as yet no recommendation as to whether Royal Shrewsbury Hospital or Princess Royal Hospital in Telford is the preferred choice for a single emergency care unit. Ludlow residents are clear they want this to be in Shrewsbury, as this is the central location in the county where transport links are best aligned.

I am sure readers will share my exasperation that yet again NHS bosses in Shropshire have failed to deliver sufficiently robust plans for the future to be able to announce their preference.

Not only has this resulted, once again, in a lack of clarity over future emergency care in Shropshire, but it also suggests a lack of proper planning or process in the way these proposals have emerged.

Residents of Ludlow are all too familiar with shortcomings in delivery of NHS reform locally. Similarly poor due diligence of NHS proposals led to the decision two years ago to reject a new hospital development in Ludlow, for which I and many other campaigners had fought for years, and was so close to becoming a reality. Then this summer Ludlow Community Hospital had its two wards amalgamated in a week without any consultation.

I am disappointed that two years of time, money and effort appear to have been insufficient to form a realistic view. It has been clear for months that all the alternatives being proposed for a single new A&E would come at a high cost, and therefore were only likely to be financed if the eventual solution removed the additional cost and clinical risks from dual site operations.

So tomorrow at my meeting with NHS bosses, I shall be pressing for proper explanations and a clear plan how to proceed. I shall reflect the views of my constituents that we need to maintain safe and secure health services for the whole of Shropshire, with Urgent Care Centres for our community hospitals.

I regret that this latest delay does little to maintain confidence in NHS leaders in Shropshire in the eyes of the local residents they serve.