HOSPITAL CAMPAIGN: Here's your chance to save your say on merger plans

The health service staff will be present between midday and 4pm at the town hall to discuss the proposals to bring together the hospitals at Chichester and Worthing.

The session has been arranged by the trusts in charge of St Richard's and Worthing hospitals at the end of their consultation into the proposals.

The meet-the-public event has been arranged after Arun District Council offered to host the occasion to enable local people to have their say.

Originally, meetings and displays were intended to take place only in the Chichester and Worthing areas. Arun's cabinet members unanimously gave their support to the merger idea at their meeting on Monday, December 1.

Cllr Ricky Bower said: "There is an awful lot of sense in what is being proposed. There's clearly the possibility of economies through bringing the two trusts together."

Combining the hospitals will ensure both keep their A&E and maternity services to end an anxious three years in which the downgrading of one of the hospitals has been discussed.

This was selected in the summer as St Richard's to leave those living in the Bognor area isolated from any A&E service.

Andrew Liles, the chief executive of the Royal West Sussex NHS Trust, which runs St Richard's, told councillors two-thirds of those people affected by the downgrading would have been in the Bognor and Manhood peninsula areas requiring A&E treatment.

He said medical staff were confident both hospitals would gain by being brought together under the latest proposals.

Services in the community would also benefit. The excellent outreach services which St Richard's ran through Bognor Regis War Memorial Hospital would be complemented by those at Worthing Hospital.

Public consultation about the merger ends tomorrow. Then members of both trusts will meet independently on December 15 to review the comments made.

If they decide to go ahead with the merger, the new trust covering St Richard's, Worthing and Southlands hospitals should be in place next April.

This will consign the controversial Fit for the Future idea for just one A&E department for West Sussex to history.

It is officially on hold at present.

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