CAMPAIGNERS have looked back on 10 years since the closure of a hospitals A&E department.

Burnley General Teaching Hospitals A&E department was closed on November 1, 2007, with services moved to Blackburn, and an urgent care centre set up in its place.

The move has been a source of contention ever since, with campaigners saying the closure has led to extra pressures on Royal Blackburn Teaching Hospital’s A&E, while hospital bosses have said the changes were ‘necessary’.

Former Burnley MP Gordon Birtwistle, who led the campaign against the closure of the A&E said: “The closure has put a lot of extra pressure on the A&E at Blackburn.

“It was built to serve Blackburn and the surrounding districts, not Burnley, Pendle and Rossendale.

“The hospital just wasn’t built for the capacity it serves now.

“Since the closure, we have seen the hospital constantly on red alert and patients waiting on trolleys in A&E at Blackburn for hours on end and ambulances queuing up outside the emergency department.”

While Burnley MP Julie Cooper said: “I’ve been opposed to the closure from the start.

“I have a family member who regularly visits the A&E at Blackburn, and its hugely inconvenient for them and especially for the vulnerable, who have to travel from Burnley to Blackburn to go to A&E.”

But East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust (ELHT) chiefs said the changes ‘revolutionised’ care across the area, moving from ‘small, under-resourced’ departments to larger, centralised services for emergency care and assessment, diagnostics, pathology tests, women’s, newborns’ and children’s care.

Doctor Damian Riley, executive medical director at ELHT said: “The changes were necessary to provide the degree of specialisation and specialist cover that modern medicine dictates and which the public deserves.

“Today, Burnley General Teaching Hospital (BGTH) has a highly successful Urgent Care Centre with dedicated teams available to deal with a very wide range of illnesses and injuries, including doctors and nurses who specialise in minor illness and injury.”