{"id":28154,"date":"2025-07-28T07:09:40","date_gmt":"2025-07-28T07:09:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/28154\/"},"modified":"2025-07-28T07:09:40","modified_gmt":"2025-07-28T07:09:40","slug":"nhs-failures-on-closure-of-minor-injuries-unit-in-cornwall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/28154\/","title":{"rendered":"NHS ‘failures’ on closure of minor injuries unit in Cornwall"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n The Cornwall<\/a> Partnership NHS Foundation Trust announced the temporary closure of\u00a0Launceston Minor Injury Unit (MIU) earlier this week, citing a lack of staff to safely run the service over summer.\n<\/p>\n

\n The Trust says the unit will reopen \u201cwhen it is safe to do so,\u201d with a suggested reopening in eight weeks\u2019 time.\n<\/p>\n

\n At a meeting of Cornwall Council\u2019s health scrutiny committee today (Wednesday, July 23), the Trust\u2019s deputy chief executive Adie Perry apologised unreservedly for not making the council aware of the closure. He also said the Trust has let down the local community.\n<\/p>\n

\n Mr Perry gave an \u201cunreserved apology\u201d to the committee, saying the Trust hadn\u2019t engaged with the committee \u201cor the wider community\u201d enough on the closure.\n<\/p>\n

\n \u201cThat type of failure we really shouldn\u2019t be doing,\u201d he added. \u201cIt was a failure to meet your expectations and our own expectations. That\u2019s taken us backwards from where we have been as I like to think we were building up a reputation of being open, honest and transparent.\n<\/p>\n

\n \u201cWe also recognise the impact that this has had \u2013 the lack of engagement and the fact that that\u2019s meant a lot of time and effort for everyone else to try and understand what\u2019s going on, to try and allay some of the fears, and again that\u2019s not acceptable.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\n He told councillors: \u201cYou should have been briefed on the pressures we were facing, you should have been briefed on the options we considered and the risks we were weighing across the patch and we failed on all three of those and it\u2019s not acceptable.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\n Cllr Drew Creek questioned the credibility of the Trust saying it hoped to reopen the MIU within eight weeks. He said in the spring of 2024 Newquay MIU had its hours reduced for what was supposed to be a period of 12 months. \u201cWe are more than 12 months down the road and we still haven\u2019t seen it return to its previous opening hours.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\n He was told the Trust was going \u201cgung ho\u201d to ensure Launceston MIU opened within the eight-week period.\n<\/p>\n

\n A report to the council by the Trust explained why the Launceston unit had been closed: \u201cAs it stands, the staffing levels in the unit are about half their usual levels. This is due to a combination of circumstances including different types of leave across the clinical and operational team.\n<\/p>\n

\n “Our primary responsibility is to ensure we provide safe and effective services. Regrettably our available staffing means that this is no longer possible over the summer.\n<\/p>\n

\n \u201cWe continue to explore a range of options to enable us to resume the service offer. Today [Monday, July 21] our chief executive has spoken to MP Ben Maguire who has provided a potentially alternative option, which we are now exploring.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\n Launceston MIU sits within the community hospital. The hospital provides a range of services including out-patient clinics and in-patient beds which are unaffected by this decision.\n<\/p>\n

\n \u200b\u201cWe are very sorry for the anxiety the temporary closure of the MIU has created locally. We would like to provide assurance that we recognise the importance of the hospital to the community and have every intention of it playing its full part in the delivery of neighbourhood health,” continues the report.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\n Launceston Minor Injuries Unit (Image: Google)And it adds: \u201cUnlike emergency departments, which are staffed by consultants, nurses and specialists who have access to the full range of diagnostic technology and facilities, the teams that provide our minor injury services are very small and are nurse-led. They are typically made up of two registered nurses with specialist training and a single healthcare assistant.\n<\/p>\n

\n \u201cIt takes about a year for each nurse to become qualified to work in a minor injury unit. We have a programme of ongoing recruitment and training as experience has shown that we do need to develop our own local workforce.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\n The Liberal Democrat MP for North Cornwall, Ben Maguire, is working closely with Launceston South councillor Damon Dennis, as well as Cornwall Council, and has launched a petition calling for the unit to stay open.\n<\/p>\n

\n Mr Maguire said: \u201cThis is a huge blow for Launceston residents, many of whom will now face long and difficult journeys to access basic urgent care. With poor public transport links across North Cornwall, this decision simply isn\u2019t viable for many of the people I represent \u2013 which is why I\u2019ve now started an online petition, which has already started gaining lots of support.\n<\/p>\n

\n \u201cI\u2019m urging the Trust to reconsider and look at alternative solutions, such as flexible hours during the busy summer period, rather than a total closure. I\u2019ll also be raising this urgently with health ministers to ensure the people of Launceston get the accessible local care they deserve.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Cornwall Partnership NHS Foundation Trust announced the temporary closure of\u00a0Launceston Minor Injury Unit (MIU) earlier this week,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28155,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[102,2960,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-28154","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-healthcare","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28154"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28154\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}