INDEPENDENT Community and Health Concern’s leader says Kidderminster residents have a “fight on their hands” to save the town’s hospital.

Nigel Thomas said history was “repeating itself” after clinicians revealed six models for the future of hospital services in the Worcestershire as part of the NHS’s joint services review. Two options could see the closure of Kidderminster Hospital.

“Once again ICHC will have to be the voice for the local people of Wyre Forest,” he said. “Standards of health care are continuing to fall across our area and are now poorer than before our hospital was downgraded 12 years ago.

“It is now time for Worcester and Redditch to take their cuts and let their standards fall to our levels. Many people have died on the way to Worcester whose lives could have been saved had we had our A&E in Kidderminster.

“We were promised a centre of excellence by [then chief executive of former Worcestershire Health Authority] Pay Archer-Jones when our hospital was downgraded and I am still trying to find it.

“I hope people do not forget the same people who instigated the downgrading are the same people who wish to dispose of it today.”

Mr Thomas said ICHC would be pushing for the removal of the two options which could see Kidderminster Hospital close “We have certainly got to fight for it, we all have a fight on our hands which I think we can win,” he added. “We have already been to meetings and expressed our concerns.”