A FREE mini-bus service is set to be launched running between the Royal Blackburn Hospital and Burnley General Hospital - to allay fears over transport between the two sprawling sites.

The issue of how staff, patients and visitors were going to travel between the hospitals as part of a major services shake-up by East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust, has been hotly debated.

But now the trust is laying on a half-hourly mini-bus between Blackburn and Burnley, as a host of medical disciplines are transferred between the two towns.

Under the Meeting Patients' Needs programme, Blackburn will be the centre for all emergency in-patient care, and a midwife-led birthing service.

The new £113 million Royal Blackburn site will also be home to all emergency cases involving severe injuries and illnesses, an urgent care centre for minor ailments, day surgery, diagnostic tests, all in-patient children's care and out-patient procedures.

Burnley will play host to most in-patient services, including consultant-based obstetrics, gynaecology and neo-natal work.

The hospital will also have a high-dependency unit, its own minor injuries ward, as well as dealing with day surgery cases, outpatients and tests, alongside a daytime paediatric observation unit.

The bus service will run from 8.15am Mondays to Fridays, with the last service leaving the respective hospitals at 8.45pm. An afternoon service has been lined up for weekends and bank holidays.

Hospitals chief executive Jo Cubbon said: "Public consultation showed us that local people felt this service was important to them so the trust was keen to make it happen."

Once the shuttle bus has been running for a few months, it wil be reviewed to see if the right kind of vehicles, and frequency of services, are available.