mean just that AFTER yet another patient goes on the run from the medium-secure unit at Calderstones Hospital, Whalley, which houses child sex offenders, killers and arsonists sent by the courts, as well as non-offenders, Trust chief executive Russ Pearce plays down the notion of the public being in any danger.

This absconder -- the fourth in the past year -- was missing for five hours, travelled as far as Halifax and got drunk before reporting himself to police.

It may be, as Mr Pearce says, that he posed no threat to anyone, for despite having been referred to Calderstones by the courts, we are told he was not a violent or sex offender.

It may also be the case that he would not have been in the hospital's medium-secure unit but in a lower-security section if a bed there had been available.

And it may also be true that a dangerous offender could not have escaped in the same way since, says Mr Pearce, any patient judged to be a danger to the public would not have been allowed to walk unsupervised in the hospital grounds as this man was when he fled. But if, in Mr Pearce's view, all these circumstances combine to reassure the public that no risk to them was entailed, it remains a disturbing fact that patients can and do escape from a medium-secure unit where dangerous people have been sent by the courts to exclude them from the public for the good and safety of the community.

And whatever placatory spin hospital officials may care to put on these incidents -- such as the patients involved not being a real danger or them not being at large for very long -- the fact remains that lapses are occurring in the security at this unit and that the public has a right to be concerned about them.

At the very least, this latest escape -- which, for all the allaying explanations offered by the hospital, should not have occurred in any circumstances -- demands that there should be a full and independent review of security at the Calderstones unit and that the findings should be made public.