EAST Riding councillors are being urged to back a motion of no confidence in the managers of a crisis-ridden Bridlington Hospital.

Mayor of Bridlington councillor Ray Allerston will call on politicians meeting in Beverley on Wednesday to censure the Scarborough and North East Yorkshire NHS Trust.

He also wants colleagues to agree to press Health Secretary Alan Johnson, who is due to meet the Conservative MP for East Yorkshire Greg Knight on November 28, to intervene.

The motion follows last month's mass demonstration in Bridlington Organised by Mick Pilling Chairman of Save Bridlington Hospital Campaign Action Group in which 2,000+ campaigners turned out to protest against cuts it was the biggest Protest Rally ever seen in the area for years. Bridlington Town Council backed a no-confidence vote in the trust in the summer when Mick Pilling tabled a vote of no-Confidence in the Trust when he was invited to speak at the meeting the vote was carried by councillors.

Coun Allerston said he believed senior management should go. He said: "If you were running a business and you weren't making a go of it they'd sack you. If the trust isn't making a go of it, the managers at the top should be sacked."

Coun Allerston said he had stopped going to meetings with trust officials because "they keep telling you the same thing and they are not improving", adding: "The Government has thrown more money at hospitals. It is what they have done with it that's wrong."

Although hospital services run by the trust appeared to have been saved when the NHS agreed in September to write off a £20m debt, campaigners say it is only a temporary waiver.

The trust needs to save another £2m and campaigners fear the six-bed cardiac monitoring unit (CMU) and a 30-bed acute medical ward at Bridlington will be reduced to a centre for day case surgery and rehabilitation.

It would mean heart attack and other acutely ill patients having to travel up to 40 miles to Hull Royal Infirmary or 20 miles to Scarborough.

But a spokeswoman for the trust said the closest place was not the best place if it could not provide the right type of care.

And she stressed it would be putting safety – not convenience or popularity - first when it came to making a decision.

She said: "The trust board has made it clear that its number one priority is patient safety, so it is disappointing to have a vote of no confidence.

"Healthcare is constantly changing, and it is vital to make sure the trust is delivering appropriate, sustainable and safe healthcare.

"Among community hospitals Bridlington is very unusual,
if not unique, in having a CMU, which makes it all the more important to keep reviewing whether or not this can provide the level of care expected today.

"Imminent changes mean that soon, some heart patients will be bypassing even Scarborough, as primary angioplasty becomes the treatment of choice for certain conditions.

"National research has shown that it is better for such patients to travel further, to specialist centres such as Hull or Leeds.

"There remain a wide range of services that can and will be delivered at Bridlington, but every decision must be carefully considered, not just based on an assumption that what we have done in the past must necessarily be the right thing to do in the future."

Meanwhile campaigners who have been pressing for a report following emergency care czar Professor Sir George Alberti's second visit to the hospital have been told a formal paper was not produced.

Instead "feedback" will be presented to a board meeting, probably in December, which will set out the future for the hospital.

Mick Pilling, of Save Bridlington Hospital Campaign, said: "It's not good enough. We would like to see a report so we can come to our own conclusions."