HOSPITAL trust chiefs have admitted the temporary closure at night of the Accident and Emergency at Queen Mary’s Hospital, Sidcup, is likely to become permanent.

Dr Chris Streather, chief executive of the South London Healthcare NHS Trust which now runs the hospital, said the move had been made because staff shortages could endanger patient safety.

He said the trust would try to recruit more staff but would not “continue to search for staff which does not exist”.

He agreed with suggestions that “temporary will evolve into permanent”.

Dr Streather was responding to questions at a meeting of Bexley Council’s health scrutiny committee, specially convened to discuss the temporary closure.

He also said the trust would sell off parts of the Queen Mary’s site not needed for health uses.

Dr Streather explained the trust was only empowered to make a temporary closure and only on grounds of patient safety.

He said Queen Mary’s was suffering from a shortage of senior nurses as well as doctors and although safety was not yet a problem “we are walking slowly downhill to the edge of the cliff”.

The decision means from today (9th) the Sidcup A&E will close to emergencies from 8pm to 8am and ambulances will take “blue light” patients to other nearby A&E departments.

But Queen Mary’s urgent care centre is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week and will be able to treat most conditions.

Dr Streather said the closure was likely to cost the trust around £580,000, in hiring GPs to staff the urgent care centre overnight, loss of income from its Sidcup A&E contract with Bexley Care Trust, nursing costs and publicity for the closure.

He accepted the closure of A&E would mean fewer emergency beds would be needed at Queen Mary’s which could free up some room to expand planned surgery at the hospital, and help the long term viability of the site.

Under the A Picture of Health (APOH) plans, Queen Mary’s will lose all its emergency services and become a centre for planned surgery by 2011.

But Councillor Pat Cammish was out of step with the general view of the committee and the public when she said the closure was a fait accompli which people would “just have to get on with it”.

She added: “I am quite comfortable with it. I am not concerned by it.

“It is high time we all pulled together; council, residents and everyone, to make it work.”

Council leader Councillor Teresa O’Neill asked for assurances that other services at the hospital would not be closed piecemeal in a “kneejerk reaction”.

Dr Streather said the timetable for implementing APOH was at an early stage and still flexible and promised to give the council an early sight of the plans and discuss how they would be implemented.