NO new money has gone into mental health services for the elderly in Burnley for the last seven years, a health watchdog revealed.

Community Health Council chairman Frank Clifford said Burnley Health Trust had received no extra cash despite the area's ageing population, which had placed greater demands on the service.

"The rationale would be that more should be going in to support the increase in volume in need, but this is not the case," he told a CHC meeting.

The patients' watchdog group is in dispute over the trust's planned shake-up of mental health services for the elderly, involving the closure of a ward, presently housed in Rossendale.

Half of the £280,000 savings would go back into the service while the remainder would be used to meet financial pressures elsewhere in the trust.

Coun Clifford said the CHC believed this amounted to a major shift in service and warranted formal public consultation, a position disputed by trust chiefs.

But he said the health authority had failed to make a decision on the issue, despite repeated requests for a ruling over the last two months.

"It has been like ploughing through treacle to get a simple decision and we still don't have one from the authority," he said.

The CHC, he said, did not wish to stand in the way of improvement in care, nor to place pressure on other services by holding out for full consultation when it was not needed.

His group had even offered to reduce the formal consultation time from three months to five weeks to get progress, but still no decision had been forthcoming.

"If anyone is hindering progress it is the health authority, not us," he told the council.

CHC members noted the position and authorised Coun Clifford and chief officer Helen Gee to take "appropriate action" to ensure wider public consultation on the proposed changes.

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