BURNLEY General can't keep its A&E department because it would cost £144million to upgrade, it has been revealed.

Cash strapped managers have said East Lancashire can only have one top A&E department and last week voted to have it at Blackburn.

They said finance was not the "key driver" - but a letter from a health boss said upgrading Burnley General was far too expensive.

The changes will see the most serious A&E cases go to Royal Blackburn Hospital instead of Burnley General.

This is about 13 per cent of emergencies - about 8,700 people a year. A further 8,000 emergencies who do not come in via A&E will also have to go to Blackburn.

A letter to officers at Blackburn with Darwen Council from Val Bertenshaw, who led the shake up for East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust said: "A financial evaluation of establishing the emergency hospital at the Burnley General Hospital site was undertaken.

"The outcome from this showed us that an additional investment of £144million would be needed to make the plan work.

"The health economy steering group considered this as unaffordable and contrary to the delivery of financial recovery.

"This proposal could not therefore be sanctioned as deliverable and was withdrawn."

The sum is higher than the £113million it cost to build the new Blackburn hospital, which opened in July.

The hospital - paid for with private cash which the NHS will pay back - will become the emergency centre for East Lancashire by 2009.

In early options on the plans bosses put forward scrapping the new hospital and Burnley General for a single East Lancashire super-hospital.

But they were later condemned for admitting that this was never an option as it would cost £570million to pull out of construction at the Blackburn site.

Mrs Bertenshaw also said changes in Government health policy were "placing different pressures on us, which did not exist when those decisions on buildings were taken in the past".

Patients can now choose to go to other hospitals outside of East Lancashire, taking money away from the trust.

Doctors hours are also set to fall and bosses said they could not recruit or afford enough to staff for two major district general hospitals.