Lewisham A&E department will be downgraded, health secretary says

England's health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, today tried to steer a middle course between the recommendations of an administrator appointed to solve the problems of a failing south London hospital trust and campaigners who wanted to keep open their local hospital's emergency unit. Hunt has accepted the broad recommendations of the administrator that South London trust should be dissolved and each of its hospitals taken over by a neighbouring hospital trust. 1 However, one of the administrator's key recommendations was that Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Woolwich form a joint trust with nearby Lewisham Healthcare NHS Trust. Chris Ham, chief executive of the health think tank the King's Fund, said, "South London Healthcare NHS Trust has longstanding and serious financial problems, so no change is not an option.