A SUNDAY newspaper raised an alarm about possible closure of 60 hospitals due to the Government's plans for Foundation Hospitals.

The threat is not from these new super hospitals but from a report from the Royal College of Physicians that has identified 59 hospitals in England, Wales and Northern Ireland where acute medical inpatients are treated in isolation from 24-hour anaesthetic cover, an intensive therapy unit, an A&E department or emergency surgery facilities.

Such hospitals are small, far smaller than our hospital was before downgrading and it is genuinely questionable whether some of them should indeed be taking acute medical inpatients.

Importantly it has re-opened the whole question of hospital downgrading across the UK. The model to which I have drawn attention before where medical admissions and doctor-led emergency services are retained locally is absolutely vital to defuse the alarm felt now in so many communities.

This model is to be formally piloted in Cornwall and similar arrangements that could be acceptable to local people are under discussion in Bishop Auckland and Down in Northern Ireland.

If these crucial extra services can be added to Diagnostic and Treatment Centres (DTCs) elsewhere it gives us hope that the extra developments so essential at our hospital are possible also.

People are telling me of the confusion and lack of signposting at what is left of our own hospital during the period of change while services are moved from E Block to temporary accommodation while our DTC is constructed.

We now have to build on this modern development which by separating elective surgery from emergency work preserves facilities for elective operations that are liable to cancellation in a conventional hospital because beds are taken up by unplanned emergencies.

Thank goodness the Primary Care Trust have exciting views on developments in conjunction with the DTC and we hope these will be made public soon so we can study them and hopefully give them our wholehearted support.

As developments on the hospital site are, we believe, essential and inevitable, the site must be preserved for health care use, hence the importance of the Local Plan Inquiry to be held at Stourport Civic Centre on October 31.

I was pleased to hear the new Kidderminster College buildings are on schedule for completion and within budget.

Concern has been expressed to me about the reduction in training in mechanical engineering. I understand this has been due to a fall in demand but electrical engineering training is expanding.

Core funding is still low and reflected in the unfair and derisory pay award for teaching staff of 2.3 per cent - even less than the 3.5 per cent award for those in schools and sixth form colleges.