THE article "Wait list warning over centre delay" (Shuttle/Times and News, January 8) missed two vital points.

Firstly, it is not just the current, unexpected, avoidable delay in opening the Kidderminster treatment centre that makes us so angry. It is the further delay on top of the five years we have already been waiting for the treatment centre, promised to us in 1998 as imagined compensation for the loss of our Charter Mark acute general hospital.

Secondly, a paper presented to the county health overview and scrutiny committee discloses the stark truth about last-minute cancellation of operations for managerial reasons across the county.

In a year before we were robbed of our hospital services there were 242 such cancellations - unacceptable even then. Since then they have rocketed and during the last year totalled 1,130 - more than four per working day.

This is due to the impossibly high bed occupancy rate at Worcestershire Royal Infirmary.

Why are there so many emergency admissions? Surprise, surprise - because Worcester, without adequate planning, has to take those from the extra population of about 120,000 from our area.

The acute trust put up the inane excuse that the delay does not really matter because services "to be provided at the treatment centre were already catered for an Kidderminster Hospital". What a PR disaster! Why spend £19 million to provide something we already have when, as everyone here knows, we had even more before we lost it in September 2000.

Sensible PR would have apologised for and explained the delay and recognised that local people will only welcome the treatment centre if they can genuinely see it is the first sign of services returning to Kidderminster.

If many more local people can be seen to be receiving their day case and in-patient treatment here it will be accepted as a real improvement.

DR RICHARD TAYLOR

MP for Wyre Forest