IT is always a worry when we hear about hospital services being transferred or closed down and I, for one, share the concerns of Darlington MP Jenny Chapman relating to the breast cancer clinic (Echo, June 22).

All I can say to Jenny is cast your mind back eight years.

Bishop Auckland Hospital was a fully operational acute hospital.

Year by year, the NHS Trust dismantled our hospital and now it is a shadow of its former self.

Don’t get me wrong, the services which we still have at Bishop Auckland Hospital are excellent.

Local people fought hard to keep their hospital services but, in my view, local people were not taken into consideration by the politicians making the decisions.

In my experience, once the trust takes away a service it very seldom comes back.

All this began when Tony Blair was still Prime Minister. His Government gave the trust a free hand on how to waste money. Mind you, they paid themselves big money for the privilege of doing so.

Cllr Sam Zair, Durham County Council, Bishop Auckland.