Health bosses in Cornwall have again dismissed claims that they are planning to close minor injury units across the county.

Labour Party members in North Cornwall issued a call last week for NHS Kernow to disclose details about plans to close minor injury units (MIUs) claiming that those in Launceston, Bude and Bodmin are “all under threat”.

The group said that it had used the Freedom of Information Act to get hold of confidential minutes of meetings held by NHS Kernow, claiming that these show that the organisation was “committed” to closing MIUs across Cornwall and replace them with a smaller number of urgent treatment centres (UTCs).

It is not the first time that the Labour Party in Cornwall have made claims about the future of health services, it previously claimed that all community hospitals were under threat due to the proposed changes to MIUs. NHS Kernow said at the time that the claims were “scaremongering”.

Health chiefs have said that while they are considering the introduction of UTCs there had been no decisions made about where they could be sited or whether there would be any impact on MIUs in the county.

Joy Basset, who lives in Bodmin and who was Labour’s Parliamentary candidate for North Cornwall in 2017, said it was vital for people to have confidence in the NHS decision-making process.

“We need to know more about NHS Kernow’s Property Asset Scorecard, and to understand which elements score more highly than others,” she said. “People will suspect that this exercise is simply about saving money – and that rural communities, particularly Bude and Launceston, will lose out.

“We are continuing to ask questions about what is going on in Bodmin. It is now more than a year since the town’s Treatment Centre was closed, with no public consultation at all.

“The Strategic Estates Group meetings should be open to the public. Their agendas should be published and people should be involved in this process. It is not good enough to simply present us with a league table and say ‘sorry, your hospital came bottom so we’re closing it.’

“You can get the answer you want by framing the question in a certain way. Labour says the NHS belongs to everyone, and we should all be involved in any redesign of our health service.”

NHS Kernow dimissed the claims and said that its plans were not secretive.

In a statement they said: “We would once again like to reiterate that absolutely no decisions have been made about the future number or location of any of our services. We are considering how all of our services fit into our Shaping Our Future vision to create a seamless health and care system that provides the best clinical outcomes and value for money, based on people’s needs and the money we have available to spend. Once the detail of the service model is clear we can then look to see what infrastructure, including estates such as our minor injury units, is required to support this.

“Our plans are not secretive. We are working with clinicians, social care, volunteers, councillors and people who use our services on the re-design of our health and care system. This process is ongoing and the third round of our co-production workshops has just ended. What people tell us will be used to help develop our plans and we will consult with the public once we have developed plans that meet the needs of each community.”