THE future of Evesham Community Hospital is safe - for as long as the primary care trust can afford to pay its doctors and nurses.

The assurance was given by South Worcestershire PCT acting chief executive Paul Bates during a board meeting yesterday.

He said that the hospital was in the same position as Malvern Hospital.

"We remain positive and the only way in which Evesham Hospital will close would be if it was unsafe to run it.

"In effect that would only happen if it came to a situation where we could no longer afford to pay nurses and doctors to be there."

But district councillor Malcolm Meikle said: "It seems that over the Evesham Hospital issue you have no power whatsoever and it is a decision which will be made by the Strategic Health Authority.

"This leaves the public utterly sceptical of anything that is said to them now."

He added: "I agree that a great deal has been achieved in the past four years, but isn't it about time the board stopped being apologists for the NHS and told us what they really think is going to happen.

Cllr Meikle also raised the point of out of hours surgeries and asked if there were any targets that had to be met. This point was responded to by Dr Tim Davies, director of public health.

He said: "We do not have the perfect out of hours system but the Audit Commission is happy with our work which is a good start.

"Our current target is to answer every call within a minute, but unfortunately we are not meeting that at the moment and indeed last weekend that figure was five minutes which is disappointing.

"It would cost £480,000 extra a year in order to have one more doctor in an out of hours surgery in the area which would then cause more district nurses' jobs to be put at risk."

The meeting - which marked the fourth anniversary of the setting up of the PCT - was the first to be held since the group learned that due to 'top slicing' that they would be losing around £13 million from their budget, taking it from £24 million to £11 million.