FOR more than a decade we have seen hospital services taken away from large communities like ours.

Across England, people are being made to go to some vast regional hospital instead especially for accident and emergency. To promote this policy, the top civil servants in London have starved local general hospitals of funds in the hope they will convince local people to elect to go to the larger regional hospital anyway for their treatment.

Top civil servants want to convince you this is your best option as you become increasingly concerned about the shabby rundown nature of your local hospital.

This process has already begun on Teesside.

Hartlepool and Bishop Auckland have lost A and E services. The top civil servants plan to leave us with just A and E at James Cook eventually. Of course, this is of no use to a person if they die in the ambulance on the way. We in Darlington have seen our hospital starved of funds for more than 15 years.

We will have no A and E within the next 2 years unless we take a stand now and attempt to reverse this policy. We must bring back full, proper funding to Darlington Memorial Hospital or we will see it close entirely. The indication is clear from the way NHS money is being spent.

Nigel F Boddy, Darlington.