SOUTHPORT
CELEBRATING
25 YEARS
CENTRAL CABS
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25 September 2019
Vol 26
www.champnews.com
Issue 39
Travel firm boss steps in to help holidaymakers
INSIDE THIS WEEK:
Southport MP Damien Moore (centre) meets campaigners outside The Blundell Arms
Ambitious plan to turn fire-ravaged former pub into a community hub goes up in smoke more than three-and-ahalf years ago. In its heyday, the twostorey detached public house, bounded by Clarence Road and Everton Road, was seen as as a focal point for the local community and its function rooms hosted many weddings, birthdays, christenings and wakes. In the early noughties, it was renamed Mr Q’s and converted into a pool hall pub but it closed in March 2016. Continued inside
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RECORD NUMBER OF PATIENTS TREATED AT A&E OVER SUMMER
‘Staff have my utmost admiration for rising to challenge’ says hospital boss
Report by Danielle Thompson PLANS to turn a fire-damaged former pub into a community hub will go up in smoke if Sefton Council’s planning committee give developers the green light to bulldoze the site. In November 2018, the Champion revealed that community campaigners, backed by members of the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) had launched a last-ditch bid to save the Blundell Arms on Upper Aughton Road, which shut its doors for the final time
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Report by Henry James
Steve Christian, chief operating officer at Southport and Ormskirk Hospital NHS Trust
A ‘RECORD -BREAKING’ 10,377 patients were treated in A&E at Southport hospital over the summer. Staff saw seven patients each hour of every day in July and August on average, which is a 4% increase on the year before. The children’s A&E team at Ormskirk hospital are also treating record numbers of under 16s with an 8% year-on-year rise already clocked up for September. Despite the pressure, the teams at both hospitals combined to treat, transfer or admit to hospital 87.9% of all patients within the four-hour NHS
national standard, claim hospital bosses. That maintained the trust’s continuing “impressive” performance, ranking it eighth out of 21 acute hospitals in the North West. Steve Christian, chief operating officer at Southport and Ormskirk Hospital NHS Trust, said: “Like hospitals across the country, we see no sign of the situation easing. “So, staff have my utmost admiration for rising to the challenge, continuing to give timely, quality care, and making our hospitals among the best in the region. “We’ve achieved these results by improving our own systems and working with local partners in the NHS and social care to ensure patients are discharged as soon as they’re well enough.
THE UK’S LARGEST LETTERBOX CIRCULATION BY AN INDEPENDENT PUBLISHER! 164,579
Continued on p5
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