Hywel Dda health board will move ahead with plans to remove beds from Tregaron hospital despite a meeting hearing of residents’ “frustration” at the move while a long-planned integrated health centre to replace it remains “three to five years” away.

A Hywel Dda University Health Board meeting held in Carmarthen on Thursday, 26 September discussed plans for a “new model of care” for Tregaron, part of the delayed broader Cylch Caron project for which tenders to build and design it have been received and are being studied.

The move will see the nine hospital beds removed - with staff working in the community - although the hospital would not close, with outpatients services at the building remaining until Cylch Caron is finally built.

A four-week ‘engagement’ on the plan launched on 1 August and ended on 29 August, which received more than 200 responses.

The plans caused uproar in the community when announced, with Tregaron Town Council expressing “disappointment and anger” at the health board for “threatening” the future of the facility.

A report on the consultation prepared for board members at the meeting said: “There is significant frustration over the progress of Cylch Caron, with a number of people asking if it will ever materialize.

“The community had been promised that the Tregaron Community Hospital beds would function until Cylch Caron was opened, there is a fear that by decommissioning the beds before Cylch Caron opens may dilute the local resource.

“There was a frustration that this was not a consultation process, but rather an engagement process which is taking place at short notice.

“There is a genuine feeling of loss to the community.”

The report added that Cylch Caron “will take at least another three to five years to be ready” but “the fragility of the current staffing rotas in Tregaron Community Hospital means we need to make planned change ahead of the winter months.”

Ceredigion MS and MP Elin Jones and Ben Lake called on the health board to keep the in-patient beds at Tregaron Hospital until Cylch Caron is up and running.

The hospital is “no longer suitable for inpatient care,” the meeting was told by Director of Operations Andrew Carruthers.

“Any change of this nature is hard and difficult for anyone involved but it will allow us to provide better care, closer to home,” he added.

The meeting heard there is a “lot of public concern and discontent” over the plans, with Hywel Dda chair Dr Neil Wooding admitting it was a “contentious issue” because “people love their hospital and have great memories of it.”

The meeting heard that the plan would be able to provide care for four times as many people and, with more nurses in the community, help Bronglais hospital in Aberystwyth to free up beds.

The meeting heard from union representative Ann Murphy that senior staff in Tregaron hospital felt that staffing levels made current services “unsafe,” and that quality care for patients was “difficult.”

“The staff supports this move,” she told members.

Chair Dr Wooding said: “It’s a painful move, and it is not without disappointment or worry, but we have to move our services so people can receive them in their own home.”

A joint health board and council project with Welsh Government support, first mooted in 2016, Cylch Caron was delayed in 2021 after housing association Barcud backed out of the project over financial concerns amid rising costs, putting the scheme in danger of never going ahead.

Ceredigion County Council and Hywel Dda Health Board insist they remain “fully committed to the delivery of an Integrated Resource Centre in Tregaron.”