£343m for NHS mental health centres – Blackpool must be at the front of the queue

Yesterday, on my Beyond the Prom tour, I sat down with GPs at Arnold Medical Centre who told me what I hear across the town – we have a mental health crisis in Blackpool, and we need urgent crisis support.

That's why I welcome today's announcement from the government. Labour is investing £343 million in the biggest redesign of adult mental health services in a generation – up to 159 new NHS facilities across England, including new walk-in community mental health centres and dedicated mental health emergency departments for people in crisis. Lancashire & South Cumbria NHS Foundation Trust, which serves Blackpool, is one of the trusts sharing in this investment.

This is a necessary step and it's the kind of investment I've been pushing for. Nobody should have to wait months for support, or find that the only door open to them is a busy A&E. But what works nationally will not be enough here unless Blackpool gets its fair share.

The scale of need in this town is not average – it's extreme. DWP figures show that across Lancashire, almost 42,000 people claim PIP for a psychiatric disorder. Over 6,300 of them are here in Blackpool – more than anywhere else in the county. We have the highest number of claimants for 15 individual psychiatric conditions and the second-highest for four more. Compare that to somewhere like Ribble Valley, with fewer than 1,000 claimants in total, and you start to see just how stark the gap is.

Behind every one of those figures is one of our neighbours, friends or family members. People dealing with anxiety and depression, autism, ADHD, bipolar disorder and psychosis are waiting far too long for help in a system that has been stretched too thin for too long. I've raised in Parliament the tragic case of Jamie Pearson, who took his own life in A&E after waiting nearly 24 hours for support. Blackpool cannot keep losing people this way.

Chris Whitty's 2021 report was clear about the health inequalities facing coastal towns like ours. Deprivation, poor housing and insecure work all pile pressure onto people's mental health and Blackpool carries more of that pressure than almost anywhere else in the country. When I met young people who have faced homelessness in supported housing this week, they told me how they are self medication with cannabis because they can’t get mental health support. It’s simply not good enough.

We have brilliant people trying to hold the line. Charities like Counselling in the Community are doing more with less, powered by volunteers and trainee counsellors, because the need is so great. Earlier this week on Beyond the Prom tour I spoke to a pharmacist at South Shore Primary Care Centre who is working with a mental health nurse to try and open pop up counselling services there. But they cannot do this alone, and they shouldn’t have to.

This is why, following today's announcement, I am writing directly to our Integrated Care Board (ICB) to demand that Blackpool is prioritised in how this funding is delivered – not treated the same as everywhere else, but recognised for the scale of need we actually have. Our town needs real, targeted investment – services that treat people with dignity and respect, that focus on prevention as well as crisis and that stop people ending up detained in police cells instead of supported in proper healthcare settings.

This is about fairness. It's about making sure people in Blackpool get the same chance at a healthy, happy life as anyone else in the country. I'll keep raising this in Parliament and I'll keep pushing our ICB until Blackpool gets the support that matches what we our need.