SEVENTY people were at Ludlow Assembly Rooms to put health chiefs under the spotlight.

The Ludlow Health Forum, which is chaired by Philip Dunne MP, usually meets behind closed doors but staged ‘open house’ to update people from the town about future plans.

Philip Dunne, who is also a health minister, chaired the forum which was attended by Simon Wright, chief executive of the Shropshire and Telford NHS Trust, Ros Franche from the Community Health Trust and Simon Freeman from the Shropshire Clinical Commissioning Group.

Simon Wright told the meeting that there would be a consultation about future services in the New Year but that the general approach will be to provide care as far as possible ‘in the community'.

This is likely to be reflected in decisions relating to issues such as the purchase of equipment such as mobile diagnostic equipment.

He added that this approach might make it possible to provide clinics two or three days a week in places like Ludlow where there was insufficient demand for five days a week.

Simon Wright said that, when it became clear that there was a problem with the maternity unit at Ludlow Hospital, steps had been taken quickly to reopen it in one of the wards that has previously been closed.

But he warned that there is an issue with too many women deciding to give birth in Hereford rather than in Ludlow.

He said that the current number of births in Ludlow is about 40 and needs to be nearer 100. Part of the problem is the number of women from the Ludlow area electing to give birth in Hereford instead of locally.

Simon Wright called for people to make sure information about local health services is factual and warned that negative and inaccurate rumours made it more difficult to recruit staff in the Ludlow area.

Ros Franche, from the Community Health Trust, said negotiations are still taking place about the lease on Ludlow Hospital.

At the time when it was expected that a new hospital and health village would be built on the Eco Park, the existing Ludlow Hospital was regarded as surplus to requirements and passed to the property arm of the NHS.

It is now being leased at an annual cost of £600,000 and Ros Franche told the meeting that this needed to be sorted out and that negotiations are on-going.

Philip Dunne said that the decision to set up a property division within the NHS had been done to improve efficiency but he recognised that this had not been entirely successful.

Vivienne Parry, a Ludlow town councillor and member of Shropshire Council for Ludlow south, claimed that there was planning permission to build 47 homes on the site of the existing Ludlow Hospital but Philip Dunne said that is not correct.

It was confirmed that no decision had been taken about a Minor Injuries Unit in Ludlow and Ros Franche said that there had been discussions about this with the GP practices in the town but that these are ‘only at the ideas stage’.

“We have to think about how we can do things better but there is a commitment to the community to provide a minor injuries unit,” said Ros Franche.