Updated
Friday, 26th February 2021, 8:00 pm
There has been a question mark over the future of Chorley and South Ribble A&E for over five years
The Post understands that Matt Hancock made the eleventh-hour intervention not long after local NHS bosses had been told that they could finally set a date to formally ask residents for their views on the future of the facility.
That would have been the culmination of a tortuous process which goes back almost five years to when the A&E at the Euxton Lane site was shut down for nine months because of a shortage of medics.