PLANS to build a new £35million mental health hospital near Burnley have been scrapped in a bid to save NHS cash.

And the future of psychiatric wards 18 to 20 at Burnley General Hospital appears to be in doubt as part of a fresh review.

Investment will be made instead in overhauling two units at the Royal Blackburn Hospital as part of slimmed-down proposals for in-patient provision in East Lancashire.

Mental health charities said the decision was 'disappointing'.

Valerie Minns, group organiser for Rethink Carers Lancashire, said: "My initial reaction is disappointment to say the least.

"There will be major issues if people are going to have to go to Blackburn instead of Burnley."

Burnley MP Gordon Birtwistle has urged councillors and GPs to reject the move and insist that a 150-bed mental health hospital, for Pollard Moor at Hapton, still be constructed.

Original plans were drawn up in 2006 and 2007, to provide four new in-patient units at a cost of around £150million.

But while substantial progress was made on proposals for a new site at Whyndykes Farm, near Blackpool, the East Lancashire blueprints, for the Burnley Bridge development site, stalled.

Health Secretary Andrew Lansley, after last year’s General Election, ordered all major projects to be reassessed by NHS officials.

And Lancashire’s primary care trusts took the opportunity to re-evaluate their Mental Health Matters programme.

The main county site will be at Whyndykes, with 154 beds, the Blackburn location will house 72 patients, with two smaller sites in north and central Lancashire, housing 18 beds apiece.

Currently there are 79 beds at Burnley and 82 in Blackburn.

MP Mr Birtwistle said: “This will have to go through the proper channels this time, and I hope that the health scrutiny committee, at Lancashire County Council, and GPs, will turn this down and provide the mental health unit at Burnley Bridge which we were promised.”

Health campaigner Coun Darren Reynolds said: “This will go down like a lead balloon in Burnley.

"There is a heavy demand in the very eastern of the county, not just Burnley but Pendle, for mental health services.

“And for much the same reasons as other services, we need to have them delivered locally.

"Burnley Bridge is a prime site for the economic regeneration of the borough and we wanted this development to proceed there.”

Coun Jean Cunningham, who represents Hapton with Park on Burnley Council, said there had been no major issues with the siting of the unit among residents.

But she added: “The only issue is the jobs and investment which would have been brought to this part of Burnley.”

Former Burnley MP Peter Pike said: “I think most people regard mental health care as the poor relation of the NHS already.

"We have to ensure if they are moving to more care in the community that they can resource it properly and not give people who need mental health care an even worse deal than they are getting at the minute.”

A Lancashire Care spokesman said: “The proposed changes seek to establish a network of in-patient provision for Lancashire which meets the needs of patients, is based on our knowledge of demand for services, and is affordable for the future.

“Thanks to the significant investment in community mental health services across the county in recent years, more people are being treated effectively in a community setting, which means that less people need to go to hospital.

“Our detailed analysis indicates that we need less in-patient beds in Lancashire than originally thought, and so we now don’t need to build a new or larger unit on a site such as Burnley Bridge.”

The existing site at Blackburn, which includes Pendleview and Hillview units, can be refurbished, say trust bosses, and is accessible to a number of locations in Burnley and elsewhere in Lancashire.