The families of two seriously ill children are campaigning to save the “fantastic” children’s heart unit where they were treated.

Suzanne Starkey, from Cowling, and George Bellas, from Grassington, this week spoke of the lifesaving treatment their children received at Leeds General Infirmary’s (LGI) paediatric heart unit and have voiced fears they will have to travel to Newcastle or Liverpool in future if the unit closes.

Mrs Starkey’s seven-year-old son Jack was born with a condition called DiGeorge syndrome and has had to go to the children’s heart unit in Leeds four times. He has already undergone 29 hours of open-heart surgery and will need more of the complex, invasive medical treatment in future.

Mrs Starkey said her son got tired easily and could not always complete full days at his school, Glusburn Primary.

She said: “The unit in Leeds is close to us, we can commute there as a family and they have a fantastic team. It serves a district of 14 million people.

“If it closed we’d have to travel all the way to either Newcastle or Liverpool. So what’s being proposed just doesn’t make sense.”

Mr Bellas’s daughter Jessica was born with a heart defect and underwent surgery shortly before her first birthday. She developed an infection following the operation and spent five weeks in hospital.

Jessica, who is now five, attends regular outreach clinics run by the LGI at Airedale Hospital, Steeton, and will need another operation before she is 25. Mr Bellas said he and his wife, Joanne, lived at the hospital in Leeds for five weeks while their daughter recovered.

He said: “We had a job and a home to keep going and a dog that needed walking, so I travelled from Skipton to the LGI and back every day, and sometimes two or three times each day. Friends and relatives also came to the LGI during our stay to give us some respite. Our ordeal would have been much harder without them.

“I don’t know how we would have coped if Jessica was treated in Newcastle.”

The closure plan has been put forward as part of the NHS Safe & Sustainable review of children’s heart surgery provision across the country. The four-month public consultation will end on July 1 and a final decision will be made in the autumn.

Mrs Starkey and Mr Bellas are urging people to sign a petition to support the retention of the children’s heart unit in Leeds. A copy is available at Nursery Corner, in Worth Way, Keighley, where Mrs Starkey works, until the end of the month. To find out more and to sign an online petition, log onto chsf.org.uk/save-our-heart-surgery-unit.