‘Hands Off HRI’ Campaign Fighting Plans To Downgrade Huddersfield Royal Infirmary

Lawyers acting for campaigners opposing a major shake-up of hospital services have issued a High Court application for judicial review against Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust plans.

The Hands Off HRI campaign is fighting the NHS Trust’s plans to axe the A&E department at Huddersfield Royal Infirmary (HRI) and replacing the 400-bed hospital with a 64-bed “planned care” facility. 

The plans would also see a transfer of capacity to Calderdale Royal Hospital (CRH) in Halifax, which would be expanded to have 674 beds. The costs of the plans to the taxpayer are estimated at being over £300million, proposed to be funded by a Private Finance Initiative (PFI)

After over 18 months of campaigning, marches and public meetings, local residents supported by the campaign have now, through specialist solicitors Irwin Mitchell, launched an application for a judicial review of the NHS Trust’s plans.

Yogi Amin, a Partner at Irwin Mitchell and the lawyer representing the Hands Off HRI campaign, said: 

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“We believe that the Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust has produced a flawed business case, which does not present all the necessary evidence or follow the government guidelines.

“The effect of seeing through these plans could not only be millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money being used, but also the closure of much needed acute local NHS services. Local campaigners and professionals have argued that alternative local options based on the use of existing resources should have been considered as opposed to the current proposed plan which would see hundreds of patients every month transported from the Huddersfield facility to CRH in Halifax.” Yogi Amin - Partner and National Head of Public Law and Human Rights

The application comes after the group held a large public meeting in August at the Huddersfield Methodist Mission building, where it heard from patients, the staff union and the local MP about the concerns surrounding the proposals.

The more than 100 people in attendance at the meeting voted unanimously in favour of proceeding with legal action and launching a judicial review case. 

A spokesman from Hands Off HRI campaign group said: “This is a long and complicated road that we are taking to challenge the proposed changes to take away our much needed local hospital services in Huddersfield. 

“We support the judicial review and we believe that the Court will consider the case fairly. In the meantime we hope that no steps are taken to make any changes to the hospital services. 

“The NHS Trust plans are opposed by local people and have yet to receive any funding or full backing from the government, so we do not think that it would be fair to go ahead and move hospital services from Huddersfield to the CRH in Halifax.”

Read more about Irwin Mitchell's expertise regarding judicial reviews.