A CONTROVERSIAL decision to close Minehead Hospital's minor injuries unit overnight has been overturned - just a month after it was implemented without warning and in the wake of a massive public outcry. The emergency nurse practitioner-led unit, which has been closed from 11pm to 7am since the middle of March, will have its 24-hour service restored on May 6. Health chiefs, who blamed the closure on a shortage of trained staff, announced the u-turn at a meeting of West Somerset Council's scrutiny committee on Monday. They said they had taken on temporary medical cover and appointed a locum doctor to work in the Bridgwater minor injuries unit, where staff from Minehead had been relocated to cover a huge rise in demand, which would free up emergency nurse practitioner resources to restore hours. And a spokesman for the South Western Ambulance Services NHS Foundation Trust said it was also hoping to be able to put some additional paramedic resources into Minehead. The decision was emailed to Minehead businessman and hotelier Bryan Leaker, who has been at the forefront of a campaign to get the closure overturned, less than an hour before Monday's meeting. Andy Heron, chief operating officer at the Somerset Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, told Mr Leaker that the decision had been made in view of the distances for some parts of the West Somerset community in accessing other forms of out of hours care, coupled with the impact of the holiday season which was about to start. Mr Leaker, who was out of the country and unable to attend the scrutiny committee, told the Free Press he was very pleased by the change of heart. But he warned against health chiefs believing West Somerset was "an easy target". "This has really evoked the passion of the community in our district and the partnership need to be aware that any future reduction in service levels in West Somerset will be defended vigourously." Health chiefs had previously pledged to restore full service at the Minehead unit by August, or earlier if possible, after announcing four new emergency nurse practitioners were being recruited to join the 34-strong team working across the county's seven minor injuries units. The closure allowed Minehead-based staff to work in Bridgwater, where it was said nurses were having to see up to 40 patients an hour during the day, compared to the average one or two a night in Minehead. At the meeting Mr Heron denied that money had been at the root of the closure, despite his colleague, Somerset Partnership NHS Foundation Trust medical director Dr Andrew Dayani's assertion that employing a locum doctor in Bridgwater was " a much more expensive solution". Mr Heron said: "This has categorically at no time been about money. "The relative cost difference between using agency ENPs and locum doctors is very minimal." Mr Heron said the closure - "the least worst option" - was an attempt to maintain safe standards of service within all the minor injury units and support its staff at a time of growing demand and unforeseen staff sickness. But health chiefs were criticised for their lack of forward planning in not seeing the staffing crisis coming. Porlock resident Steven Fitzgerald said the situation was "crisis management" and lessons needed to be learned. Jean Parbrook, a Minehead town councillor, said the fear and hysteria exhibited at a public meeting on the closure staged by Mr Leaker earlier this month had been palpable. "It is about the fear that if we or our loved ones become ill in the middle of the night we will have to wait so long for medical assistance that it may be too late, especially for the very old or very young," she said. Cllr Parbrook said as there was no overnight GP cover based in West Somerset, residents in the district had to rely on sharing the services of mobile doctors in Bridgwater and Taunton. And she said she had been told that ambulances which should be based in Minehead overnight were regularly sent to Taunton to 'park up' as there was a better chance of hitting targets if they were nearer the bigger area of population. The new NHS 111 telephone triage service was said to work well in West Somerset. "But if you have nothing else, it would, wouldn't it?," said Cllr Parbrook. "Minehead residents are absolutely right to feel concerned - the reassurance of being able to consult an ENP face to face in the middle of the night who can take responsibility for the decision of what to do next has been a great comfort." Minehead resident Siobhan Hutchings said the cut in opening hours had sparked an outpouring of passion and condemnation. "For many, it is that reassurance as there is otherwise no doctor service and Musgrove Park Hospital is 26 miles away, which can take an hour or more to drive to. "As a local resident I think the fear of feeling isolated and cut off has to be the main theme, along with the worry about ambulances not being available." Councillors also voiced their concern. Cllr Mandy Chilcott said the Minehead unit acted as a triage point and it was unfair to expect vulnerable people to know what treatment or service they needed to access. She said she was absolutely astounded that the decision to close the unit overnight had been made within a fortnight without any apparent consultation or any assessments being made on the likely impact. "This problem (with staffing) has been coming for the past 12 to 18 months - our local surgeries have managed to train or recruit ENPs but it seems our local hospital cannot." Cllr Martin Dewdney said it appeared West Somerset would always be "left out" unless the community fought to retain services. "It is a postcode lottery here. The action you have now taken at Bridgwater could have been taken earlier. "The Minehead unit will reopen overnight on May 6 but we wanted the service in March and April. "We have heard nothing new today apart from the climbdown at the end - we are in the 21st century and yet we seem to be going backwards." Cllr Dewdney warned health chiefs that if there were any future attempts to "damage" the service in West Somerset, the council would call them to account for their actions on a monthly basis if necessary. Cllr Peter Murphy said he was very pleased the money had been found to restore the service but it was a great shame that the community had had to shout to get something replaced that should never have been taken away. He described the closure and the ensuing furore as " a public relations disaster". "Minehead has a splendid new hospital and inevitably that leads to raised expectations. "If you get ill in the night it is very frightening." Cllr Murphy said there needed to be a tremendous push to let people know how and which health services they needed and how to access them. Dr Rosie Benneyworth, Somerset Clinical Commissioning Group's clinical lead on urgent care, told the meeting that the new NHS was complex, the pressures on it enormous and public expectations high. She reiterated the need for people to access the appropriate services and said the help of both the council and the wider community was needed to encourage people to "self manage". "It is a huge issue how we can encourage people to take some responsibility for their health," she said. But there was praise from many councillors for the NHS and council leader Tim Taylor pledged the authority would do all it could to support the organisation and the message it was trying to get across. He said, if the Minehead unit had been seeing just one or two patients overnight, he could understand the reason for transferring staff to Bridgwater. "But I think there is a fear factor here, combined with the fact that we have a long way to go to access other services."