THE ROW over plans to shut 31 beds at Rossendale General Hospital has really revved up.

And though the charges are hurled at health bosses poised with the axe are now larded with MP Janet Anderson's politicking, it is, in our view, all welcome grist to the mill.

That is because Rossendale General Hospital is a prized and vital community asset and any proposed run-down of it must be given the fullest debate.

And, to us, that means that not a single bed should shut or any job be axed until there is cast-iron proof they are no longer needed. So let the row rage.

For the background suggests that the NHS needs more beds, not fewer.

Nationally this winter sick people have been shuttled from town to town and patients have been stuck on trolleys for hours waiting for admission to a ward. And nurses at Rossendale, worried about their jobs, claim that patients have been turned away from their hospital because all the beds - which the bosses want to reduce - have been full.

Add to this, the charges now hurled by Mrs Anderson - that the cutback is to do with cash, not patient care. Rejecting the health trust's claim that these beds are generally under-used, she links the £200,000 saving that management are seeking to the pay-off to sacked chief executive Maggie Aikman.

Then, cranking up the issue, she hurls in the suspicion that what may really be on the agenda is the eventual closure of Rossendale General.

But we do not care if this is alarmist. For each and every one of these charges demands a firm and reassuring answer from the health chiefs - and not one cutback move otherwise.

And let them be clear that any response that includes talk of Rossendale patients being offered, as recompense, beds in a super hospital miles away over the hills will not suffice - as, unlike them, not all of us are equipped with super transport.

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