Ambulance station is saved from EMAS cuts
LUTTERWORTH Ambulance Station appears to have been saved from the axe despite wholesale changes on where ambulances will be based across the rest of the county.
A meeting was hosted by East Midlands Ambulance Service (EMAS) at Lutterworth Town Hall on Monday morning where a spokesman for the organisation said they had negotiated with the landlord of the Gilmorton Road station to keep using it.
The meeting was part of a consultation about proposals to axe ambulance stations across the East Midlands.
EMAS wants to replace its current 66 stations with 13 ‘super stations’ or hubs and more than 100 standby points, which could be temporary buildings or even buildings shared with the police or fire service.
However, the 11 people who attended Monday’s meeting said that Lutterworth Ambulance Station would be used as one of the new community standby points.
Carly Thompson, from EMAS, said: “We have been in conversation with the landlord for some time because we lease the building as part of a Private Finance Initiative. We can confirm we will be staying there and the ‘station’ will become a standby point.”
Those who attended Monday’s meeting were told that Leicestershire’s two super-stations will be in Loughborough and at Gorse Hill, Leicester. The super stations are where ambulances will be returned to at the end of a shift so they can be cleaned and re-stocked.
However, a number of people at Monday’s meeting said that south Leicestershire could be disadvantaged because the hubs were so far away.
Ian Staples, a Lutterworth town councillor at the meeting, said the hub did not have to be in south Leicestershire - but could be in north Northamptonshire.
The EMAS representatives said that ideas generated at Monday’s meeting – including one other which proposed using facilities at Rugby which is not in an area covered by EMAS – would be fed back into the consultation process.
The consultation finishes on December 17. To respond to the consultation either visit www.emas.nhs.uk or phone 0800 917 9911.
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Weather for Market Harborough
Monday 20 May 2013
Today
Light rain
Temperature: 11 C to 18 C
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