Madness!

9.43.00pm BST (GMT +0100) Thu 29th May 2008

Chichester's pride and joy - the Government's football

The recommendation to downgrade the highly regarded, award winning St Richard's Hospital can only be described as madness.

Residents in the Midhurst area and on the Manhood peninsula will rightly be particularly alarmed.

The ability of St Richard's to recruit and retain the highest qualified staff will be severely hampered as specialist services will be moved from Chichester.

It has emerged that five of the eight non-executive members of the West Sussex PCT Board that will make the decision on Wednesday are Worthing based. Furthermore, the Director of Public Health and Wellbeing is the Chairman of Worthing Together, the Worthing Local Strategic Partnership.

It was the Director of Public Health and Wellbeing's report that led to Worthing scoring heavily on the impact on deprived patients and population that proved decisive in the recommendation to make Worthing the home of the Major General Hospital.

As currently constituted the PCT Board cannot credibly vote in favour of Worthing as the location for the Major General Hospital on an objective basis.

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