AN MP has claimed that Department of Health statistics prove Burnley General Hospital is big enough to have its own A&E.

Gordon Prentice, MP for Pendle, is campaigning for an investigation into the 2007 move to shut Burnley’s emergency department and use only Blackburn to serve East Lancashire’s 500,000 population.

Professor George Alberti, the man who masterminded the change, reported to the National Clinical Advisory Team earlier this year that the reinstatement of emergency care services at Burnley was “not feasible”.

The Government expert said the volume of patients “would not justify the employment of the specialist clinicians required to sustain an emergency service” and that “the service would be unsafe and detrimental” to meeting patients’ demands.

However, Mr Prentice is pointing to Burnley’s admission figure of 61,997 in 2003, the last year when separate A&E attendance rates for Blackburn and Burnley were published, and 2008 statistics, which reveal around 45 accident and emergency departments in England had lower attendance rates than 61,997.

He said: “Figures from the Department of Health for 2008 show that 145,055 people attended our single A&E in Blackburn.

“By contrast, 131,689 people went to A&E in the Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust where there are two A&Es.

“In the Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust there were 115,057 attendances at the two A&Es – in Preston and in Chorley.

“There are many hospital trusts around the country where A&E attendances don’t even begin to compare with the volumes handled by Burnley when it had its own blue light emergency department handling 61,997 attendances.

“There is no reason why Burnley should be singled out for special treatment.

“It should get its own A&E back.”

Mark Walkingshaw, East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust’s director of planning and strategic development, said: “The decision to develop the Royal Blackburn Hospital as East Lancashire Hospitals’ emergency department supported by a network of urgent care centres was based on the best-possible clinical evidence and has resulted in vast improvements in death rates.”