A FRESH protest over potential cuts to hospital services is to be held on Wednesday amid claims the “direction of travel has already been decided upon” before public consultation.

The campaign group, 999 Call For The NHS, said demonstrators will gather outside Darlington Memorial Hospital to coincide with a “behind closed doors” meeting involving the board and governors of County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust.

It claimed the meeting would discuss the future of the accident and emergency department at Darlington along with services at the University Hospital of North Durham and the possible wholesale closure of Shotley Bridge community hospital.

Under a draft Sustainability and Transformation Plan (STP), officially published last week and set to be developed over coming months, one of Darlington or North Tees General Hospital, in Stockton, could become a “local” hospital and specialist elective care centre, but lose its A&E.

The group said that with building works for six new operating theatres for elective surgery at Darlington already under way “it was arguable that the direction of travel [had] already been decided upon, prior to any public consultation”.

Chief executive of the Durham and Darlington Trust, Sue Jacques, is one of seven people on the STP executive tasked with drawing up the plan for Darlington, Durham, Teesside, Hambleton, Richmondshire and Whitby, which is being submitted to NHS England.

The aim is to tackle a potential £281m health and social care deficit in the region by 2021 with the contentious change programme envisaging a shift from hospital-based treatment to increasing NHS services in local communities.

Jo Land, from 999 Call For The NHS, who recently helped organise a 110 mile ‘Footprints March’ for the NHS, said: “All the health services in our area are at risk and even if Darlington Memorial Hospital’s A&E remains open, Darlington will see unprecedented demand, queues will lengthen and lives will be at grave risk.

“Therefore the STP must be stopped. We believe that we can only save the NHS services that our life may depend on by standing together and fighting for all of them.”

A spokeswoman for County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust said the meeting was an opportunity for the trust board to formally consider the draft STP plan and feed back into the further refinement and engagement work being undertaken.

Recently a survey by the British Medical Association said that two thirds of doctors had not been consulted over STPs, which are being drawn up across the country, while a fifth did not support the plans.

A nurse at one hospital in the region said they were being “kept in the dark” about the impact the STP would have on how and where they would be working, but also on patients.

The nurse, who did not want to be named, said: “The system is about to break, but no-one in management seems to care.”