THERE’S a sense of great injustice over the loss of the Lambert Hospital in Thirsk.

Bequeathed to the people of Thirsk for the good of the community and residents’ health and wellbeing, the building now literally being sold off to the highest bidder.

Now the former Thirsk MP, Baroness McIntosh of Pickering, is calling on the head of NHS England to overrule the decision and calling for some accountability.

She has also reiterated some of the scepticism voiced locally when the NHS announced the hospital was to close because the staff couldn’t be found to operate the hospital safely.

As a community hospital it offered a panacea for some of the problems blighting social care and acute hospital services, albeit on a small scale. The services the 14-bed hospital offered in rehabilitation, physiotherapy and other areas meant patients could be treated between leaving an acute hospital and returning home, easing pressure on crowded hospitals and social care services. The very thing the NHS said it wanted to see happen in its Five Year Forward View.

Even if it wasn’t viable as a community hospital, the rejection of Hambleton and North Yorkshire councils’ offer to buy the building from NHS Property Services and provide a health and community facility for Thirsk was another blow and has rightly angered the councils.

We understand why the NHS needs to generate as much money as possible to plough back into its services, but in this case it appears to have been done to the detriment of a local health service.

Let’s hope Baroness McIntosh gets some answers to her questions.