Simon Wright, the man in charge of both Royal Shrewsbury Hospital and Princess Royal Hospital, Telford, says infighting will play into the hands of “out-of-county groups that would love to take more services into their cities”.
The intervention comes after the Future Fit process hit a brick wall earlier this month when Shropshire and Telford’s Clinical Commissioning Groups split down geographical lines on a decision over the future location of the county’s sole emergency centre.
That came after the three-year Future Fit process, which was designed to negate geographical interests, decided that the emergency centre should be based at the Shrewsbury site, along with women’s and children’s services.
The six members from Shropshire CCG voted to go ahead with the plans while the six from Telford voted against.
Mr Wright has dismissed suggestions over costs related to the project and says that the people behind the review made their decision on population needs.