Hospital report reveals debt fear

A confidential report which sparked a review of hospital services and led to nearly a year of protests across Surrey and Sussex has been revealed - reports the BBC.

The report to NHS managers in 2005, seen by BBC South, said health services in Surrey and Sussex were "financially unsustainable".

They were heading for debts of between £350m and £700m by 2009, it said.

South East Coast Strategic Health Authority said it had since taken action (cuts) which they expect to produce a surplus.

The report, by management consultants McKinsey, was obtained by a member of the public under the Freedom of Information Act.

It made a number of suggestions for reducing the health authority's potential debts, including cutting the number of qualified nurses by 6%.

It also suggested changes to acute Accident and Emergency departments, including allowing only patients arriving in 999 ambulances to enter.

Others would have to go to emergency care centres.

Fit for the Future has led to fears about potential cuts to A&E and maternity services at St Richard's Hospital in Chichester, Worthing and Southlands Hospitals, the Princess Royal at Haywards Heath and the Royal Surrey County Hospital in Guildford.

The only firm proposals so far put forward are in East Sussex, where either Eastbourne District General Hospital or the Conquest, in Hastings, could lose its maternity unit.

A public consultation is under way on which town will have the county's main consultant-led centre.

Election spotlight falls on weekly bin battle

Dropping weekly bin collections has flared into a major issue for hundreds of thousands of voters at next week's local elections, the Daily Telegraph writes.

Concern about proposals to bring in fortnightly collections stretches from Guildford in the South to Berwick-upon-Tweed, on the border with Scotland.

Cuts in collections in a substantial amount of local authorities has provoked an angry response from council tax payers

Campaigning on the threat, which comes after revelations last week that weekly rounds have been ended for households in four out of 10 councils in England, stretches across party boundaries with Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat candidates pledging to reinstate the weekly collection.

Lord Bruce-Lockhart, chairman of Local the Government Association, said the elections had seen rising concern among council taxpayers. "It is more of an issue than it was," he added.

Doretta Cox, who runs the Campaign for Weekly Waste Collections, said: "It is becoming a very hot topic. In the last month it has just gone crazy. It should be a local election campaigning issue but unfortunately, because they are coming under Government pressure, it is not as important as it should be."

The Telegraph yesterday found that in 19 out of 45 councils the issue had become a major concern. The Liberal Democrats are fighting the proposals in Luton and Liverpool, where the party has branded proposals by Labour for fortnightly collections as a "Rats' Charter".