Cottage hospital fight continues

Campaigners urging the retention of cottage hospitals in Cumbria are lobbying MPs in London over the issue.

They were handing a petition in at Westminster urging ministers to ensure the future of community hospitals threatened with closure in the county.

An NHS review cast doubt over community hospitals at Brampton, Keswick, Millom, Maryport, Cockermouth and Alston.

Despite an £18m lifeline announced last week campaigners have said they are not convinced services will remain intact.

The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) revealed last week that it was to hand over the money over three years as a stop gap measure until a new acute hospital was built in west Cumbria.

'Strength of feeling'

The authority, which is based in west Cumbria, said it was acting because it had a duty to help with the "economic and social development of the area".

But Eleanor Walton, from the Alston League of Friends, said the campaign needed to carry on until there was a guarantee the community hospitals were safe.

She said: "We are still very concerned that the government's conception of community hospitals is not our cottage hospitals.

"These hospitals are lifelines, we now have no paramedics and we could possibly lose our ambulances soon. We need our hospital."

Mrs Walton, who carried 70,000 signature from Cumbria to the capital, added: "The government have to listen to us because I think they realise what the strength of feeling is.

"Our hospital would have closed by now if we had not marched and protested."