Powys healthcare fight taken to Parliament

The fight to save hospital beds at Welshpool and other community hospitals across Powys has been taken to the new Secretary of State for Wales.

Powys Teaching Health Board is considering a proposal to axe the beds to focus overnight facilities at Brecon and Newtown instead.

But it has faced a huge public backlash with public meetings held across the county during August making highlighting the sense of local anger.

And now Welsh Liberal Democrat MP for Brecon, Radnor and Cwm Tawe, David Chadwick, has raised the crisis in Powys healthcare with the new Secretary of State for Wales, Stephen Kinnock.

Speaking in the House of Commons, Mr Chadwick MP also highlighted the increased waiting times for Powys patients being treated over the border in Shropshire. 

Powys has no district general hospital of its own and relies on English providers for almost 40% of its healthcare.

Since summer 2025, Powys patients receiving treatment at hospitals including Hereford, Shrewsbury, Telford and Oswestry have been required to wait longer than English patients in the same hospitals, despite previously being treated equally. 

This has left some patients facing waits up to a year longer than patients living just a few miles away across the border, with some waits extending to almost two years.

Responding to Mr Chadwick MP in the Commons, Mr Kinnock described cross-border healthcare as a “really important issue” and said the UK and Plaid Cymru Welsh Governments needed to find a better way of working together. 

Mr Chadwick MP said: “People in Powys are being squeezed at both ends of a healthcare system that simply isn't designed around the realities of living in a rural border community.

“We have patients being forced to wait longer for treatment simply because they live on the Welsh side of the border, despite capacity existing in English hospitals. Then, when people do receive treatment, a lack of community beds back home can leave them stuck in hospitals like Hereford when they could be recovering closer to their families.

“Powys Teaching Health Board itself acknowledges that we need around 400 health and social care beds, yet we currently have just 148. Cutting community hospital beds even further in those circumstances is completely backwards.

“I welcome the new Welsh Secretary recognising that cross-border healthcare needs fixing and that we need to cut through the red tape and bureaucracy between the two governments. I now want to see that recognition turned into action.

“The Welsh Liberal Democrats will keep fighting to ensure both the UK Labour Government and Plaid Cymru Senedd Government actually get together and solve these issues, so our communities stop falling through the cracks.”