Documenting the campaigns to keep open Grisedale Croft and to secure the future of community healthcare on Alston Moor.
Alston Moor is one of the most isolated rural communities in mainland England. The Alston Moor Parish Council is documenting and pursuing two parallel campaigns — to keep Grisedale Croft open, and to restore community healthcare to the Ruth Lancaster James site.
Each has its own story, its own working group, and its own folder in the Vault. Both rest on commitments that have already been made.
Grisedale Croft is the only residential care home on Alston Moor and the residential half of the 2018 NHS-and-Council settlement that followed the loss of in-patient beds at the Ruth Lancaster James Cottage Hospital. The Parish Council, working with this community, intends to hold them to it.
The cottage hospital served Alston Moor for over a century. Its in-patient beds were closed in 2018 on the basis of commitments that have only ever been half kept. This campaign asks the ICB to recognise the integrated model the community designed in 2014 — and which the country now calls a Neighbourhood Health Centre.
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The Grisedale Croft Working Group has written formally to WFC setting out the community's full legal and evidential position. On the same day, the Council missed its statutory deadline to release key consultation evidence. Read the letter and find out what happens next.
Read more →Alston Moor Parish Council — Grisedale Croft Working Group, 14 May 2026 Westmorland and Furness Council has today published its consultation on the future of Grisedale Croft Care Home.
Read more →Many of you have been asking when the formal consultation on the future of Grisedale Croft will open. Here is what we know so far.
Read more →Alston Moor folk have seen many promises broken before. Consultation results not being paid attention to by the very authorities who have asked our opinion. Our scepticism is earned. However, across Britain, communities have faced the same threats — and some have succeeded. Their experience informs how these campaigns work.
From legal letters to packed public meetings, families and communities across Britain have reversed care home closure decisions. Here is what worked.
Read the cases →Rural towns facing “temporary” closures, vacancy excuses, and closed-door decisions. Some refused to accept it. Here is how they did it.
Read the cases →The Vault is the working group's shared archive. The items below are flagged public so anyone can read them.
There are a few local faces in this....... as well as information about what was promised
Letter to WFC Cabinet and Officer following our meeting with them on 15th May. Lays out reasons they need to withdraw from the consultation and work with us to improve the service and get the NHS to fulfil their promised obligations
A comprehensive reference document on the regulatory obligations governing established residential care homes and new-build care home development in England. Intended to support: (1) the challenge to WFC’s claimed ‘alternative building’ option; (2) demonstration of WFC’s ongoing obligations as registered provider; (3) the preliminary legal advice brief; and (4) the consultation response evidence base.
Attached to FOI: Step-down commissioning and 2017-2018 legacy records
Working group members can upload, tag, and organise the full archive.
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