I NOTE with that through your paper that a Westhoughton Town Councillor is running an online petition to get a health centre built on the old Bolton Council yard behind the Bethel Church. The Council yard already has outline planning permission for 19 dwellings.

He is suggesting that Westhoughton has somehow been denied a new health centre and is claiming that the previous Labour government are to blame for not pursuing the building of a new centre — a facility that Westhoughton and its residents are in dire need of.

Setting the record straight, Bolton Primary Care Trust had included the redevelopment of health care in Westhoughton, as a feature of their strategy for Bolton. However in 2011 the Coalition Government dissolved PCTs and replaced them with Clinical Commissioning Groups.

This resulted in Bolton CCG deciding to withdraw funding and not to proceed with the proposed project costing an estimated £9m plus.

The refurbished Winifred Kettle Wellbeing and Integrated Care Centre, due to open next month, has been made possible by the co-operation of the Hospital Trust and the Labour Council. It will provide an excellent health provision, services will include district nursing, health visiting, maternity, podiatry, physiotherapy and occupational therapy. It will bring health care in the town up to modern Control of Infection Standards which is why services, had to be temporarily transferred to other locations in the borough.

Westhoughton Age Support Project (WASP) will continue to have use of the building for meetings and Senior Solutions will use it as their base, making the move from the community centre on Central Drive.

The previous services including respite care have been moved to Wilfred Geere in Farnworth. Less than 20 per cent of those using the facility were Westhoughton residents, and there was previously significant spare capacity on a daily basis. They do however have the option of respite in Westhoughton Area Care Homes.

By bringing a range of services under one roof, many more Westhoughton residents can make use of the numerous new facilities. Residents will be also eligible to have their dressings changed.

Many readers, who have signed the petition, will be surprised to learn that at a recent Westhoughton Town Council the same councillor stated publicly that the possibility of obtaining funding for a health centre from the Government "had as much chance of success as a snowball in hell and the chances are that the NHS would be unrecognisable at the 2020 General Election.”

What are they to make of this contradiction in terms in the last five weeks?

Councillor David Chadwick

Leader Westhoughton Town Council