THE Royal Bolton Hospital has a major problem.

We have not got sufficient beds to deal with the number of patients needing treatment from the vast area it has to service.

Waiting lists grow ever longer, and in the Accident and Emergency Department patients are lying for hours on trolleys because there is nowhere else to put them. So their answer is to close Hulton Lane Hospital and add to the chaos at the Royal Bolton Hospital by taking in those who would have been treated there. Can anyone explain to me the logic behind this brilliant proposal?

Quite apart from that, as a visitor I have personal experience of the wonderful service provided at Hulton Lane. My father was there; my aunt was there and, more recently, my brother-in-law was there. To visit Hulton Lane was to be transported back to the time when hospitals were how we expected them to be. The wards are spotlessly clean. The doctors and nurses are kind and considerate. The standard of service is second to none. Even parking is not a problem. And the powers-that-be are proposing to destroy this little oasis of calm and sanity, and leave us with nothing but one huge monolithic hospital with an unwieldy over-stretched system that, despite the valiant efforts of the doctors and nurses who work there, can never hope to cope with the huge numbers of people it is being forced to deal with.

Come on, you people of Bolton. This must not be allowed to happen. Remember, those who are doing this were put there by you to carry out your wishes. Do you think that by closing one of the few successful hospitals we have in this area today that they are doing that? Well, if you don't think so, let them know, and in no uncertain way. It is not yet too late to reverse the decision, but it will be if you don't act now. Don't be put off by the old story that we can't afford it. There is a minimum level of hospital service below which we must not fall. It may well be we have already reached it, but we most decidedly will have if Hulton Lane Hospital is closed.

A Hornby

Glendale Drive

Bolton