REDDITCH MP Karen Lumley has expressed her surprise and disappointment that University Hospitals Birmingham was not able to develop its option for the running of the Alexandra Hospital.

Freedom of Information requests have revealed no information was shared between University Hospitals Birmingham (UHB) and Worcestershire Acute Hospitals Trust regarding the review process between the launch of the hospitals review in January 2012 and June this year.

In January 2013, Mrs Lumley decided to make the private discussions with UHB open and transparent as she felt it was only right residents were made fully aware of the facts at a time of great uncertainty. She visited the hospital in Birmingham several times to speak to the management team to see what they could provide for Redditch people.

And she has once again voiced her insistence that the people of Redditch must be properly consulted on the future of their hospital.

Speaking on a radio programme, she said: “What I am concerned about now is that we need to get some resolution here. We are two or three years down the road and no decisions are being made.

"I don’t want to get to a situation where somebody says our hospital isn’t safe anymore because we’re not making decisions that need to be made. I would like to now see the options that they are going to put on the table – hopefully next month – and I think it’s important then that the people of Redditch have their say on what they want. If these options aren’t feasible, if they aren’t costed properly then there’s some very tough questions that I think this trust are going to have to answer.

"At the beginning of this process our hospital was going to be massively downgraded. We’ve got to a situation now where we have won some concessions. If these proposals are acceptable we are going to see a brand new unit in the Alex which will deal with all hip and knee surgery across the whole of the county. That’s new investment coming into the Alex which we wouldn’t have been looking at two years ago.

"The Birmingham Trust needed to look at the options themselves. But they weren’t given the access to the Alex that they wanted. They weren’t actually promising us anything. But they were interested in providing services because their hospital was full to capacity.

"I am disappointed. I was disappointed that they didn’t tender for our services. If it’s found that what has been done isn’t right then we need to really look at it. But for the people of Redditch now we need to look at the costed proposals that Worcestershire Acute Trust are putting on the table and let the people of Redditch have their say. That’s what they want to do and that’s what we must let them do."