Plans to merge north west NHS labs including Lancaster into super lab are shelved

The long-running project to create a so-called “pathology hub” for the region would have seen routine testing of a range of specimens requested by GPs and outpatient departments moved from seven individual hospitals to a new facility in Samlesbury.

However, NHS bosses have decided to “pause” any further work on developing the laboratory in order to ensure that they have “fully engaged” with staff working in the existing service about the proposed change.

It is understood that the legal TUPE process to transfer workers from their existing employers to Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust – which runs Royal Preston Hospital and was set to host the hub – has also been halted and will not now happen as planned on July 1.

The £31m overhaul was conceived more than five years ago and was intended to save £11m per year compared to the current system.

It would have meant the labs at Barrow-in-Furness, Blackburn, Blackpool, Kendal, Lancaster and Preston were merged into one super lab serving around 500,000 people.

The boss of the programme says the four NHS trusts involved – Lancashire Teaching Hospitals, Blackpool Teaching Hospitals, East Lancashire Hospitals and University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay – remain committed to it.

However, the move has been opposed throughout by the union Unite, which has previously raised concern over the length of time it could take to ferry samples from some of the farthest reaches of the region to a new centralised base.

There were also fears it could have been sold off to a private healthcare company.

Keith Huston, regional officer for Unite, welcomed the planned review – but said that NHS leaders must abandon their apparent belief that building a single super lab is the only option to modernise the service.

“We have always been in favour of collaboration [between the trusts that currently process the tests], but the model proposed doesn’t make any sense,” he said.

“They have got their eyes on a £31m grant from the government – and they are trying to put forward a model to get the money, rather than looking at a clinically-led process.

“There is only one reason [for what is being proposed] – and that’s to privatise the service later on. You take all the cheap, easy-to-do laboratory stuff and then sell it off five or six years down the line to a private company.

“There have been more questions than answers. We weren’t happy with it from a clinical or an ideological point of view – but we need to make sure that any model meets the needs of the people of Lancashire and South Cumbria.”

Mark Hindle, managing director for the Lancashire and South Cumbria Pathology Collaboration, said: “We see this pause in the programme of work as a positive opportunity to do some further and more in-depth engagement with the pathology workforce,” he said.

“This will be done with transparency and undertaken in partnership so that we can be confident as a board that all options have been explored before moving forwards together with this important work.”