THOUSANDS of furious residents have slammed plans to close an Essex hospital and transfer services to other sites across the county, a health board meeting has been told reports the Local Democracy Reporter.

Residents told health bosses that proposals to close St Peter’s Hospital in Maldon are a “bad or very bad idea” at a meeting on Thursday at Southend Council offices.

The board held a consultation which looked into potential changes to the places where some community hospital intermediate care and stroke rehabilitation services are provided; a proposal to make permanent the temporary move of the free-standing midwife-led birthing unit from St Peter’s to Braintree, and proposals on the possibility of moving all other patient services to other locations.

The consultation ran from January 25 until April 11 and more than 5,400 took part with most of those commenting on the plans for St Peter’s Hospital.

Paul Parson, director of Strand, which specialises in patient involvement and public consultation, strategic communications, and programme leadership support for complex health and care service change programmes gave a rundown of the consultation results.

He told the meeting: “It’s been an incredibly strong response to the consultation and that’s not always the case with NHS consultations, so this has given us some really rich data to give feedback to the ICB.”

Speaking about the section of the consultation referring to St Peter’s Hospital in Maldon, he said: “You will note the difference in numbers here, so 4437, more than the previous two responded here.

“Lots of people only responded to this section and there were hundreds and hundreds of comments, and 92 per cent of people thought it was a bad or very bad idea, and that strength of feeling came through in other conversations we had.

“Travel and access had very strong feelings around that, pollution, poor public transport, road infrastructure, all of those issues came to the forefront here again. The loss of provision at St Peter’s is seen as a critical local resource and again the strength of feeling came over there.

“There were views that included that increased uncertainty would have an impact on the local population, particularly elderly residents. People thought it was a valued local and they valued the services there and others voiced increased pressure on other services.”

Maldon MP Sir John Whittingdale has previously used a parliamentary debate in the House of Commons to shed light on the difficulties facing St Peter’s Hospital.

A campaign group called Save Maldon’s Medical Services has been set up to fight the proposals, on its Facebook page it says: “The action group has been set up by a group of concerned and proactive residents in response to the threatened imminent closure of St Peter’s Hospital in Maldon. Meaning the relocation of services elsewhere, not necessarily within the district or within easy reach.”