A poster created by Brent health chiefs that told residents they could only use A&E for "life-threatening emergencies" will have to be taken down.

The Advertising Standards Authority ruled on Wednesday (February 3) that the poster by the Brent Clinical Commissioning Group (BCCG) was misleading and could be harmful.

Community organisation Brent Patient Voice (BPV) brought the poster to the attention of Advertising Standards, challenging whether the claim "A&E is for life-threatening emergencies only" was misleading and potentially harmful.

They believed that patients with serious medical conditions/injuries that were not necessarily life-threatening may be wrongly discouraged from going immediately to their nearest hospital A&E.

Robin Sharp, chairman of BPV, told getwestlondon : “We said the poster was misleading because it is not true and potentially dangerous if someone took it literally.

“There is no evidence to prove that there are lots of people going to A&E incorrectly, with latest research finding that maximum 15% of people in A&E could be treated elsewhere.

“Fortunately London North West Hospital Trust website was revamped when the ruling came out and we are seeing ripples of the ruling spread as far as Worcestershire.”

'Poster was to help support A&E staff'

BCCG on the other hand, claimed that the main aim of the ads was for patient safety.

They said they had based the core message on nationally available NHS information and that they had received clinical approval for the campaign.

A BCCG spokesman said: “The ASA acknowledges that the intention behind our advertising campaign was to help support A&E staff to treat the most urgent cases as quickly as possible.

"Its ruling is based on a single complaint out of a total patient population of nearly one million.

“We offered to make an immediate adjustment to the original campaign slogan, removing the word ‘only’ from the phrase ‘A&E is for life-threatening emergencies only’ in order to accommodate the few non-life-threatening examples of A&E-relevant cases cited by the complainant.

"We also invited BPV to help us develop the campaign’s messages.

“As advised to the ASA, we were seeking to educate people who might consider going to A&E for situations which were non-life-threatening and who could be treated more appropriately elsewhere.”

The ASA ruled that the ads must be taken down and Brent Clinical Commissioning Group was told to take care not to inadvertently make misleading and potentially harmful claims about the scope of A&E services in future.