A PUBLIC meeting is to be held over fears beds and the eye clinic will close at Evesham Community Hospital.

The “Keep our NHS Public” campaign also claims minor injury provision could be closed at the hospital.

The group is responding to Worcestershire Health and Care NHS Trust’s Sustainability and Transformation Plan (STP) which is being developed for the future of the health service in Worcestershire.

The group is made up of Labour, Liberal Democrat and Green party members.

A report from Evesham Labour Party claimed that community beds could be reduced from 324 to 182.

In response, an STP spokesman said the beds would only be reduced if plans to create more home solutions are successful in decreasing the number of people needing hospital beds.

The spokesman added its suggestions had been popular with most people that they had asked.

Stan Emmett, campaigns organiser for Evesham Labour Party, said: "News has now emerged of a reduction in general rehabilitation beds and the possible closure of the eye clinic.

"We will be sending out a strong message that any moves to close our local hospital will be fiercely resisted. No cuts. No closures."

The first meeting in March attracted more than 50 people to Evesham Town Hall.

Sue Harris and Sarah Dugan will speak on behalf of the STP.

Issues raised at the March meeting included a proposal to cut £336 million from local health care by 2021, to be found by more provider ‘efficiency’, including reducing temporary staff.

There is also an aim to reduce demand by one percent.

An STP spokesman said: "The local Sustainability and Transformation Partnership (STP) is a really important long-term plan to address some of the local health and care issues we have, to improve health for people across the area, and to ensure we can to provide safe and sustainable care into the future.

"This means putting prevention and self-care at the heart of what we do, strengthening and sustaining our GP services, developing our ‘out of hospital’ offer, providing safe and sustainable specialist services such as cancer and maternity, and ensuring that people can access the right urgent and emergency care services, without delays when needed.

"We also need to have the right systems and workforce to enable the changes we will need to make.

"After publishing the first draft of our STP in November 2016, we have been out collecting some initial views from patients, stakeholders and the wider public.

"There was broad support for the fairly high level themes, including doing much more to keep people well and out of hospital, and over the last few months we have updating our plans and adding further details based on that feedback.

"These will be shared with our statutory partners and boards, ahead of taking the updated plans back out to the public and our staff for further discussion and engagement.

"We won’t make any significant changes to how services are run or accessed without engaging or consulting with those affected first.”

The meeting will be held at Evesham Town Hall, Monday, June 26 at 7pm