It’s hard not to believe that the choice of name might have been its first big mistake. The Government-appointed body now trying to close down our local community hospitals calls itself the Success Regime.

Curious, that. How much success can be found in shutting down hospital beds, therefore depriving people of close-to-home care services which are highly valued? Put it another way. If the “success” plan succeeds, what will those who hit target have to look back on with pride?

“You should know my proud achievement was to remove from you the hospital services that used to be here in your home town, for your care and comfort. They are no more. How good was I?”

Hmm… don’t hold any breath for grateful thanks.

There’ll be a kind of logic in the Success Regime’s plan somewhere. It will reside in the number-crunching records, held by accomplished bean-counters, which demonstrate – truthfully, of course – that it’s cheaper not to care for the sick than it is to look after them.

Nobody would argue with that. It is a lot cheaper to turn blind eyes to need. And since need doesn’t have a quantifiable cost, it tends not to figure in bean-counting calculations. Neither does choice.

So, all those campaigning now to save their community and cottage hospitals in Brampton, Alston, Wigton, Maryport and Keswick have one almighty fight on their hands. Theirs will be an uphill struggle.

There are, apparently, recruitment problems. Staff can’t be found for these much-loved little places so they’ll have to go. And if that seems pitifully defeatist to you – well, you won’t be alone.

There’s a consultation period, of sorts. People are encouraged to express their views. But invitation to voice choice isn’t impressing many, who appear to anticipate on which side of the argument success will fall.


Anne Pickles “If they’ve said they’ll do it, we don’t stand a chance,” a dispirited 80-year-old in Brampton told me last week. “That hospital was a godsend to my Bill – and to me – when he was dying,” another woman, from Irthington, said. “How can they do it? How could MPs support it?”

And a young girl in the hairdressers chipped in: “Well, it’s not as if the beds are always full is it? What’s the point of it anyway?”

The point can’t be expected to occur immediately to the young. It’s natural for them to fail to see the disadvantages and difficulties of centralisation – because they haven’t yet needed to face them.

But for patients and their families, having to tramp across their county to secure the care they need – when they need it – they can be horrendous. And, other than to those accountants in Success Regimes, they are unnecessary.

It’s no doubt true that, had the hospitals not already existed, any plan to launch a series of new ones would be prohibitively expensive. But to dismantle and discard what we already have and treasure? That’s just madness. And it will be regretted.

John Holland, who is driving a social media campaign to protect these hospitals, is a man on an impassioned mission. And he is deeply troubled by this latest attack on Cumbria’s cottage hospitals.

“In Devon, even the total opposition of senior clinicians and a judicial review didn’t stop the bed closures. Hurrah for democracy,” he said – tongue firmly stuck in cheek.

“Rory (Stewart) has come out in the press in favour of the hospitals. But he needs to put his money where his mouth is.”

So do many MPs who condone with valuable votes the loss of truly local services in their constituencies. Because there will come a time when legacies will show that what was once erroneously called success, was actually a textbook definition of failure.