The assurance that health bosses want to provide hospital services in Ilkley well into the future must be of some comfort to the thousands of people who got behind the bid to save the Coronation Hospital.

While retaining the historic cottage hospital building itself, and having medical professionals based in a building in the town, is considered important to at least some, most would agree it is the health care services themselves that are important.

When there was a clear risk of the hospital closing, that left patients with the prospect of having to make the trip to Airedale General – no mean feat for those with limited mobility and without their own transport – for many routine procedures.

What was clear from the health and social care trust representatives who spoke before Bradford councillors last week, was their commitment to providing existing services, if not additional ones, within Ilkley.

Of course, this still leaves a big question mark over the future of the Coronation Hospital itself.

If it is eventually concluded that services can be provided by professionals visiting patients in their own home, at a GP surgery, or online via ‘telemedicine’, then the powers that be may decide there is simply no need for the building.

A human cost to be paid when the financial axe falls

When it comes to balancing the books it is all too easy to look at threatened services and facilities purely in terms of bricks-and-mortar assets and the bottom line of the balance sheet.

But all too often there is a very human cost to be paid when the financial axe falls.

This is the case with Ilkley Children’s Centre, which is under threat of closure due to Bradford Council’s budget proposals.

The council has identified seven such centres across the district which may be shut down because of supposed “lower need.”

Tell that to the parents who are fighting to save the centre, and who rely on the facility on Little Lane.

One of them speaks to us today – a mum battling cancer who does not know how she would have coped without the service provided by Ilkley Children’s Centre.

The closure is by no means a done deal, and a consultation process has begun to garner views of users of these threatened centres.

Anyone who has any interest in any of the earmarked facilities is urged to register their views at a series of events across the district.

People power could be the answer to saving this obviously much-used and greatly needed service.