Health chiefs have come under fire for closing community hospital beds across the country as new figures show more patients that ever before are having to wait for more than four hours at overstretched A&Es.

Nearly a third of England’s 340 community hospitals have seen beds closed in the past 10 years, according to recent research by the University of Birmingham.

The loss of these valued health services is placing extra pressure on larger acute hospitals and leaving communities, particularly in rural areas, struggling to access emergency and routine healthcare, HuffPost UK has been told.

The criticism comes as new NHS England figures published Thursday show just 71% of patients were treated within target time last month at A&Es in England. 

This is the worst performance against this target since records began.

A&Es are mean to treat and admit or discharge 98% of patients within four hours and doctors say the growing delays are putting both the safety and quality of patients’ care at risk.

Communities fighting to bring back community hospital services also told HuffPost UK they fear slashed services are potentially putting lives at risk.

In the latest of our What It’s Like To Lose series, we have spoken to people in Wantage, and in the South Devon town of Dartmouth, to ask about the impact of the closure of their community hospitals. 

After nearly eight years of shrinking local budgets, the series has been examining the impact of disappearing public services – such as bus routes, leisure centres, job centres and hospitals.

For almost a century the striking Wantage Community Hospital – built decades before the NHS was even founded from money raised by local subscriptions – has provided healthcare for the surrounding town.

But two-and-a-half years ago, all the in-patient beds were closed. Locals were told it was because of legionella in the building’s pipe works.

The news prompted a fierce backlash in the community, and this summer, a thousand people marched through the town on a blazing hot day carrying placards demanding: “Give us our hospital back”.

Since the closure, people travel more than 30-minutes by car, or even further on public transport. Accessing treatment, or visiting sick relatives, has become harder for local residents, many of whom had been treated there for generations.

“Here in Wantage we are fighting to stop them closing our local hospital, built in the 1920s by public subscription, then handed over for safekeeping to the NHS,” says Terry Knight, of the Save Wantage Hospital campaign group.

“This is despite the imminent arrival of 10,000 new residents in our town, mainly from London, due to new homes being built. They have also bulldozed a school to make way for additional housing, closed our police station to build flats, and closed the day centre. And we live in relatively prosperous Oxfordshire.” 

The closure, which health chiefs said was temporary, is just one of many examples of stripped services at community hospitals across England as health chiefs reorganise care with more focus on larger “hub” hospitals.

Knight, who was born in Wantage Hospital, told HuffPost UK three generations of his family were treated there. He says an accident he had back in 1963 perfectly illustrates how rural towns made use of community hospitals.

As a child he fell into barbed wire and slashed his leg open in an accident while playing tag in the woods.

The 67-year-old remembers being driven to be seen by emergency doctors on the back of a potato van, and his wounded thigh promptly patched up.

“They assessed it, dressed it, said ‘You don’t need stitches in it’, and I got an anti-tetanus injection as I recall,” he says. “Today you’d have to get an ambulance to Oxford rather than a man delivering a sack of potatoes to my mum giving me a lift.”

A core part of community hospital’s traditional role was to provide nursing and rehabilitative care for people who are recovering from operations and major illnesses. This would free up beds in larger hospitals as people moved back to their local communities to recuperate.

But campaigners say with sick people now placed in hospital wards far from Wantage, their friends and family are finding it difficult or impossible to visit.

Emma Jones, another campaigner who runs the group’s Facebook page and has lived in Wantage all her life, said: “All the evidence shows that people who get visitors they get better quicker.

“When my dad became ill and he was admitted to Wantage Hospital two weeks after my youngest was born, it was brilliant because I could just see him all the time because he was local.

“Whereas if he was at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford it would have been a nightmare to visit when you’ve got children at school and you work.”

Unfortunately, she also knows of cases where relatives were placed further from home, with sometimes significant impacts on their recovery.

“A friend of mine, she lost her father a year ago and he ended up being in a stroke unit in Abingdon, even though he hadn’t had a stroke, and the visiting hours were really bizarre,” said the 48-year-old.

“So hardly anyone went in to see him and he became really depressed. They really do believe that it sped up the end of his death because he was so unhappy that he didn’t want to live anymore.”

The nearest major hospital is now in Oxford, some 16 miles away, with other smaller hospitals in towns 10 miles away in either direction.

Former mayor and Oxfordshire County Councillor Jenny Hannaby, says bed-blocking is a real problem in Oxford hospitals, in part as a result of the loss of services at Wantage Hospital.

“I would like Oxford Health to do their duty and do the maintenance that is required for the hospital and reinstate the beds,” she said.

“They need to put in enough beds to make it viable and restore the hospital to as near as it was before. They need to use the community hospital to take pressure off the other services in the acute hospitals and doctors surgeries.”

Hospital bosses told the community they had put aside an estimated £350,000 to £450,000 to sort out the legionella in the pipe works at Wantage Hospital. But in the intervening years the work has not been carried out and the hospital in-patient wards remain closed. 

A consultation is currently underway about the hospital’s future, although there is wide skepticism about whether services will return.

Maggie Swain, 70, chair of the Save Wantage Hospital Campaign Group, believes the NHS is investing too much in top heavy management rather than community hospitals like Wantage.

Conservative MP for Didcot and Wantage, Ed Vaizey, also echoed the community’s concerns.

“I am sympathetic to the difficulties local residents are facing due to the closure of local health services, in particular at Wantage Hospital,” he told HuffPost UK.

“As a local resident myself I find it frustrating having to go to Abingdon for services that should be available nearby. That is why I continue to lead efforts to make sure services are provided where they are needed.”

‘The health service is helping our town die on its feet’

In the South Devon waterside town of Dartmouth, the community has also faced the double whammy of its hospital closing and public transport being cut. 

Dartmouth Hospital was closed in 2017. Since then people in the town must take a ferry to reach the nearest A&E in Torbay and when the ferry isn’t running, use a road that is often closed due to flooding. 

Daisy Littler’s family, who have lived in and around Dartmouth for more than 30 years, used the hospital for all sorts of health emergencies.

“When the hospital was open our family used its walk-in services for reasons varying from helping my husband with removal of a splinter in the foot threatening septicaemia; to helping my five-year old son with mystery rash, which turned out to be penicillin allergy; and myself for emergency x-rays following a car accident,” she said.

“I had regular physio treatments at the hospital following that accident and for other problems relating to my severe osteoarthritis, to prolapsed discs in the neck and following a fall which resulted in two fractures in pelvis.”

Since the hospital’s closure the 67-year-old has often had to travel 1.5 hours by car to Exeter for appointments. 

But it is hearing of more serious health emergencies that has left her really worried.

Littler says when a neighbour who had already suffered a major heart attack thought he was having another, he had to wait hours for an ambulance.

Another Dartmouth resident and member of the Dartmouth Women’s Action Group, Lynn Gunningale, who chained herself to the empty hospital at a protest rally last year, says she too has been horrified by the stories she has been told.

“A lady came to us at the protest and told us her husband was actually one of the very last people to be an inpatient at Dartmouth Hospital,” she said.

“He was then moved to Torbay Hospital where he died alone because his wife had trouble getting to him. She came down to the hospital because she wanted us to know his story and I agree with her, it’s not good enough.

“There’s absolutely no reason why that gentleman needed to die alone in a hospital far from his own community.”

The nearest walk-in centre for people living in Dartmouth is now 12 miles away in Totnes. But Dartmouth has very limited public transport to Totnes and none on Sundays. The car journey can take up to 50 minutes, or even longer in bad weather or during the busy tourist season. 

The impact of being isolated from easy-accessible medical care and emergency support is having a profound impact on Dartmouth, Littler told HuffPost UK.

“I was talking to my podiatrist and she said a lot of her customers are leaving Dartmouth because they are too worried about their health, and that is terrible,” she said.

“They’re too worried that if they get ill it will take too long for an ambulance to get to them. It’s making people who have lived here a long time leave. 

“It’s sad to see this beautiful town dying on its feet and the health service is helping it to die on its feet, which is tragic.”

NHS England told HuffPost UK a new health and wellbeing centre to provide services for Dartmouth is opening and says it has worked closely with the community to provide the right services for local need.

Torbay and South Devon NHS Foundation Trust said all community outpatient clinics and community services previously received by the people of Dartmouth are still available to them from an interim site and will be until the new centre is open.

Liz Davenport, chief executive of the trust said: “We know how important good access to health and care services is to everybody and particularly those in rural communities. This is one of the reasons why we have reviewed the way care is provided to better meet people’s needs.”

Meanwhile in relation to Wantage, NHS England says there are other community hospitals in Oxfordshire including at Witney, Didcot, Abingdon, Wallingford and Bicester and it is engaging with local people on the future of healthcare in the community to ensure the best services are available to meet people’s needs.

Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust told HuffPost UK: “We know the uncertainty regarding its [Wantage Hospital’s] future has gone on longer than anyone would have wished for and acknowledge the important role the hospital has played in the lives of those in the area.”

The trust says it is currently working with Oxfordshire Clinical Commissioning Group, the local population, and health and social care partners to develop the services which meet the needs of the local communities.

NHS England, responding to the wider criticisms about the loss of community hospitals, told HuffPost UK: “As set out in the NHS Long Term Plan, £4.5billion of new investment will fund expanded community multidisciplinary teams to work with general practices covering 30-50,000 people.

“The NHS and local councils across England are working together to improve the health of people living in their local areas and providing services that meet the needs of their local populations.”  

In a new series, HuffPost UK is examining how shrinking local budgets are affecting people’s daily lives. These are stories of what it’s like to lose, in a society that is quietly changing. If you have a story you’d like to tell, email basia.cummings@huffpost.com.