Elderly parents who care for their son are fighting to keep mental health care in the town.

Moira and Andrew Harris’s son was diagnoses with a severe mental illness in 1989, and Moira has cared for him ever since.

But they fear the potential closure of Millbrook could leave families like theirs without a vital service.

Moira, 82, says having the unit so close to their home has saved her son’s life in the past and fears for what it will mean for him if it goes.

She said: “The staff at Millbrook have been absolutely wonderful and if it is no longer there then people will die.

“It is somewhere to have a place of refuge when they are incredibly ill.

“We need it because it has been a place of hope, a sanctuary, and it is important knowing it is there.”

Under new plans NHS bosses have proposed moving either adult mental health or dementia inpatient care more than 40 miles away, to Chester.

Just six crisis beds would remain in Macclesfield.

The option favoured by NHS bosses would be to move dementia services to Lime Walk House, off Victoria Road in Macclesfield.

In this case, specialist rehabilitation patients currently using Lime Walk House would be transferred to a rehabilitation facility at Soss Moss Hospital in Nether Alderley.

Mrs Harris says her son ‘has a life when he is well’ and enjoys going out on walks with her in the countryside.

David recently returned home from the Wirral, where he had been staying in a unit for four months.

But due to the distance she and her husband, a retired doctor, struggled to visit their son as often.

Mrs Harris said: “It was very hard on him, he was climbing up the walls of the intensive care unit. I was fearing for him, it wasn’t easy, as you can imagine. But now that he is back I can see his personality coming back through. He really is the most lovely man.”

She added: “But what will happen if I can’t drive my son 40 miles to Chester or to the Wirral, or can’t get an ambulance? What will happen to him when I die? There is no where else.”

Mrs Harris, of Alderley Edge, says mental health care has to stay in Macclesfield.

She added: “They say they don’t have the money and that it needs investment in Millbrook or it isn’t as luxurious but who cares? It has saved my son’s life several times and that is what they are there for.”