Fit for the Future put on hold as trusts call for merger

John Wilderspin, chief executive of West Sussex Primary Care Trust, made the announcement on Tuesday morning.

The move follows news last Friday that the Royal West Sussex NHS Trust and Worthing and Southlands NHS Trust had agreed in principle to establish a single NHS trust.

It is a solution that many believe could have been reached three years ago if the Fit For The Future proposals from West Sussex Primary Care Trust had not pitched St Richard's Hospital in Chichester and Worthing Hospital against each other in a fight for survival.

The PCT has also been criticised for wasting millions of pounds in persisting with proposals that clinicians and patients alike did not want and said would not work.

The single, acute NHS trust now envisaged would run both the threatened St Richard's Hospital and Worthing and Southlands Hospital.

For full story and reactions see West Sussex Gazette October 8