AMBULANCE journeys for seriously-ill patients will take five minutes longer if East Lancashire's intensive care beds are relocated to one hospital, a study has found.

But the findings have been greeted with derision by protesters, who claim the true time delay will be much longer, putting lives at risk.

They made their feelings known at a public meeting at Clayton Park Conference Centre, off junction seven of the M65 in Clayton-le-Moors last night.

A review of clinical services in East Lancashire is proposing to centralise the area's 15 intensive care beds at either Burnley General Hospital or Queen's Park Hospital, Blackburn.

Under the plan, the hospital left without intensive care would concentrate more on non-emergencies.

Both hospitals would still have high-dependency beds.

The meeting was also told three other proposals to leave the services as they were, to build a new super hospital and leave one hospital without high dependency beds, had been dropped.

There are two proposals remaining centralising intensive care and restructuring existing services at both hospitals.

However, at last night's meeting it appeared that the review team favoured the option to locate intensive care at one hospital, prompting fears that Burnley would lose its intensive care and accident and emergency departments.

Declan Harte, manager of the review for East Lancashire NHS Hospitals Trust, told the meeting clinical teams were reassured there would just be five minutes extra on the journey on average.

The figure was calculated on how long it would take an ambulance on an emergency call to get from Blackburn to Burnley and vice versa, compared to now when they just have to travel across a single town.

Mr Hart said: "It was from an independent study by the ambulance service which was electronically recorded from real paramedics on real journeys.

"The methodology was robust and the data sound."

However, some at the meeting seriously doubted the study's findings.

Protesters feared the average was such a low figure because most of the journeys surveyed were from central areas of Blackburn and Burnley, rather than fringe parts of East Lancashire such as Rawtenstall.

A woman told the meeting: "My father needed to go to hospital in Burnley from our home in Brierfield. It was an emergency and he would not have made the journey to Blackburn."

When Mr Harte told the meeting the care at the end of the route was more important than the journey, a woman shouted: "Not if they die on the road."

Dr Geraint Jones, a consultant, said the changes would mean fewer operations cancelled, better use of staff and the opportunity for a more preventative approach.

A 16-week public consultation begins on March 20 before a decision is made.