DEMAND to provide services for patients with complex mental health needs means there is no concrete date for Calderstones Hospital to close, councillors heard.

Cllr Dave Smith grilled Blackburn with Darwen Council health bosses over the future of the facility in Whalley after plans to transfer patients who have exceptionally complex mental health disorders from the site in Whalley to a new 40-bed low-security unit in Maghull, Merseyside, fell through earlier this year.

The only NHS hospital in Britain that specialises in learning disabilities had been due to close in 2019, but that closure has been scaled back with uncertainty over the future of low-secure services on the site and elsewhere.

Head of safeguarding and special services, Paul Lee, said: “There is still a plan to close Calderstones but given the demand in the system, a date has not been fixed.

Director of public health, Dominic Harrison, added: “At one time, they were going to set a deadline for closure but now the situation is a bit more fluid.”

Cllr Smith said: “A proportion of the residents there will be moving into Blackburn with Darwen and we need to know what there is in place in terms of support for them.”

Medium secure learning disability services will continue on the site until the summer of 2020, with a new £60million replacement medium secure unit at Maghull expected to be ready for May/June 2020.

Mersey Care, which acquired Calderstones Partnership FT in 2016, has discharged around 130 patients from the Calderstones site into alternative services, but there continue to be patients that remain.

A spokesman for NHS England, which sees closing Calderstones as a key part of its transforming care programme for learning disability services, which seeks to move patients out of institution-type facilities, said: “The last round of NHS capital allocations by Department of Health and Social Care was squeezed by the need to provide emergency public funding following the collapse of Carillion, so as to support the partly completed new hospitals in Birmingham and Liverpool.

"But we strongly support capital funding for the closure of Calderstones and will be pushing for it, providing appropriate support is in place for everyone to ensure a smooth transition to any new care service.”