SPECTATOR correctly identifies the culprits in the relentless cutbacks at The Friarage and Lambert hospitals as the local NHS: the South Tees Trust and the Hambleton, Richmondshire and Whitby Clinical Commissioning Group, plus some doctors, who have conspired to deprive local access to these services from the very patients they are there to serve (D&S Times, Mar 25).

As County Councillor Gareth Dadd observed, commitment to its local communities is a component conspicuous by its absence in our local NHS.

The campaign to save the brilliant 24/7 consultant-led maternity services at the excellent Friarage Hospital kept the service going for four years more than the local NHS had planned.

Working with the 3,000-strong Save the Friarage Group, Richmondshire District Council, North Yorkshire County Council and a host of town/parish councils, the campaign forced the extension of the deadline by organising a march involving 4,000 local people. It twice referred the questionable arguments for closure to the Secretary of State for Health, and it produced an 84-page report that showed how other communities facing the same challenges were managing to keep their consultant-led services going.

The four years of extended life saw nearly 5,000 babies born under the loving care of the consultants and midwives at the family-centric Friarage. There are a large number of parents locally who remain eternally grateful for the reprieve.

The local NHS has cut back the operating days of the Short Stay Paediatric Unit and we have the first UK A&E unit with an age limit – young children in need of immediate healthcare must go elsewhere, according to the South Tees Trust.

The local NHS shut the Lambert and only now the talking begins on why it will not re-open. The caring, midwife-led maternity service at the Friarage thankfully continues, but for how long if numbers dwindle?

I rang recently some of the small consultant-led maternity units I visited when compiling the 84-page report, and I was delighted to find all are still continuing with their services.

We have a local NHS with a keen appetite to impose a NHS-free zone for immediate healthcare services in Richmondshire and Hambleton.

All it will take is for community leaders to stand idly by and it will get its own way – take note, Rishi Sunak MP.

Local communities must be prepared to man the barricades before there is nothing left to fight for.

County Councillor John Blackie (Ind), Hawes