EVERY home in East Lancashire will receive a copy of proposals for the shake-up of local hospital services.

A summary of options - to centre on the location of critical care beds - will be posted to homes in January as a formal 12-week consultation gets underway.

Health chiefs have already announced four provisional options and are seeking views before December 2.

These will help determine what the final options for January's consultation will be.

The four options focus on the moving of critical care beds between either Queen's Park Hospital in Blackburn - which will take on all Blackburn Royal Infirmary services next summer - or Burnley General Hospital.

Fears have been raised that Burnley General will be the one to lose the beds because £113m has been spent on extending Queen's Park to take on the Infirmary's services, including A&E.

Val Bertenshaw, who is leading the review for East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust, said: "We want to do everything we can to ensure that the public are able to have their say and to this end we will be publishing a summary consultation document which will be delivered by post to households in East Lancashire and also available from other public locations.

"There has been no decision yet about the format or content of the document as we are still in the process of gathering the views of patients, staff and anyone with an interest in health care."

The Trust has run into opposition over the plans as some patients needing either emergency treatment or medical back-up for operations will have to travel to the site with critical care beds, which are in intensive care and high dependency units.

The four options being consulted on at the moment are:

l Do nothing.

l Build a new general hospital between Blackburn and Burnley.

l Move intensive care beds from one site.

l Move intensive care beds and high dependency beds from one site.

Views can be sent before December 2 to: Chief Executive, East Lancashire NHS Trust, Queen's

Park Hospital, Haslingden Road, Blackburn, BB2 3HH, by telephone to 01254 293855

or by e-mail to chief.executive@elht.nhs.uk.