I predict blue light A&E will return to Burnley General Hospital.

Why so, wise one?

In November 2007 Burnley lost its A&E to Blackburn despite huge protests at the time in Burnley and Pendle. The issue has been a festering sore ever since.

Blackburn's gravitational pull is awesome. It sucks in anything and everything that isn't super-glued down. But things change.

The Health Secretary, Andrew Lansley, was here in East Lancashire yesterday, visiting Burnley's “Urgent Care Centre”.

I bet it will be re-badged as an A&E and will take some emergency cases by ambulance under a publicly available protocol explaining which conditions can be treated there and which will have to go elsewhere.

This is precisely what I and many others, such as former Burnley MP, Peter Pike, and former independent Health Authority chair, Ian Woolley, have been banging on about for ages.

We pressed the previous Government to act. It was pushing a boulder uphill.

Eventually, at the tail end of last year and with a General Election on the horizon, Broon conceded an inquiry.

But we were told the status of Burnley's UCC would not change.

Sorry! Impossible! Out of the question!

However, Professor Cooke, the National Director of Emergency and Urgent Care, would look at ways of making Burnley more efficient and effective. My words but that was the gist of it.

Cooke's report is now with the NW Strategic Health Authority. It is not publicly available and I have no idea what it says.

But consider the clues.

Yesterday, Lansley told the Lancashire Telegraph: “I have met people working here at the Urgent Care Centre and on the face of it they were providing a service very similar to what you would expect to see at A&E. What I want to find out is, is it possible for there to be an emergency department here at Burnley which people in the main can come to for the majority of their needs?”

Lansley elaborated: “As I said during my visit to Burnley last year, I believe this can be better achieved by re-establishing an emergency department at Burnley General Hospital, while ensuring that those with some of the most serious conditions like major trauma, heart attack and strokes, should be taken direct to the specialist services available at Blackburn.”

I suspect that Burnley's newly elected Lib Dem MP, Gordon Birtwistle, who spent many a chilly night on candlelight vigils outside Burnley General, will not accept anything other than a return to the A&E designation. At the moment he describes the Urgent Care Centre as a “first aid post”.

Lansley will give him what he wants and, in so doing, seek to anchor the Lib Dems in Burnley and the Conservatives in Pendle.

But Lansley must be careful how he explains the change. He could open the door to similar demands elsewhere.

All over the country, people campaigning for the return of A&E in their own areas will be pointing to the Burnley example.

Patient groups, shamefully shut out and marginalised, can be expected to find their voice again.

Professor Cooke's report on urgent care in East Lancashire, due out at the beginning of July, will, therefore, have national significance.