Town should have say in NHS future - MP

BEXHILLIANS are being given their own opportunity to air their views over the threats to the future of local NHS services.

Fresh from a meeting with the chief executive and chairman of embattled East Sussex Hospitals NHS, town MP Gregory Barker has announced that he is calling a public meeting at the De La Warr Pavilion for Thursday, February 1 at 7pm.

At a briefing for officers of the League of Friends of Bexhill Hospital and the League of Friends of the Conquest Hospital he passed on the bleak news from his meeting with chief executive Kim Hodgson and chairman John Lewis.

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He told the Observer: "Both Hastings and Eastbourne have had their protest marches.

"We hope to pack the De La Warr Pavilion and give the residents of Bexhill the opportunity to join the campaign to save the Conquest but also to say that it is not just a case of Conquest closures but that we want a fuilly-funded local health service in BOTH Eastbourne and Hastings and we are not going to allow the Government to play one off against the other."

He said that at his meeting at Eastbourne the chief executive and chairman had made it clear that not only were the future of maternity and gynaecological services at risk but that they were under pressure for a whole raft of hospital services to be taken out of the hospitals and put into the hands of family doctors.