Farron angry at appalling decision to offload South Lakes health services to Carlisle

Tim Farron has called for an urgent review following the decision of NHS Cumbria to offload much of its community health provision onto the Carlisle-based mental health trust.

This means that services such as health visitors, district nursing, diabetic services, community children's services, community dental work and school nursing will be run by a trust with no track record or expertise in this area.

Instead, Tim believes that the services should have been given to the local hospitals trust, based at Westmorland General Hospital.

Tim said: "This was the perfect opportunity for community health services to be based at Westmorland General Hospital, which would have added much needed critical mass to our hospital as well as being by far the most sensible place for these services to be.

"This decision was rushed, ill-considered and wrong - NHS Cumbria had the chance to make an obvious decision that would have helped patients across the South Lakes as well as strengthening our hospital, but they failed to do so. Luckily there is still time for the Department of Health to block this move, and I'm hopeful that they will."