Speculation is mounting over the reorganisation of hospital services. Trust chief executive Matthew Kershaw is put on the spot.

The office of the man overseeing hospital services in east Kent sits somewhere inside a maze of featureless corridors in a 1930s building.

Matthew Kershaw’s task is no less complex or daunting. He is in charge of the single greatest reorganisation of hospital services since Canterbury, Ashford and Margate hospitals were merged into a single trust in the late 1990s.

The wholesale changes could leave the Kent and Canterbury downgraded to little more than a cottage hospital.

Mr Kershaw is carrying out his work in the face of extraordinary pressures on resources and money.

We had specifically asked to speak to him directly because of the relentless speculation from staff inside the trust that before long it will close the urgent care centre at the K&C, forcing patients suffering strokes or heart attacks to go to the QEQM Hospital in Margate or the William Harvey.

Is this true? Has the trust told its staff the centre is closing?

“No, we haven’t,” says Mr Kershaw flatly.

He follows up with some NHS management speak about “maintaining the safety of services” but admits that “we are looking at the safety and sustainability of these services and speaking to staff about the pressures on these services and looking at what we can do to address these pressures”.

Conspicuously absent from our conversation was any mention of last week’s Gazette front page headline: “Hospital ‘to close’ urgent care unit.”

If that was so wide of the mark, wouldn’t the hospitals’ chief exec be putting the paper straight on the centre’s future? Apparently not.

This begs another question: Why do so many staff think the unit is closing if they have not been told it is?

Mr Kershaw answers: “People obviously take a view from the conversations that we’ve had. Part of our style here at the hospital is to talk with our staff, to engage with our staff and to be open with our staff.

“We have talked to them about some of the pressures that we face. Those pressures are real and we are dealing with those pressures. Clearly, if there are further difficulties, we would have to look at what options we’ve got.

“But we do not have a final plan at this point. We don’t have a timetable that we are absolutely working to. That’s work we need to do and will do with our staff. Obviously some staff will form opinions based upon conversations that we’ve had and that’s quite right that they do that.”

So, the trust denies categorically that it has told staff the urgent care centre is to close, but is relaxed about the fact that many employees have concluded that it is “based upon conversations” management has had with them.

Neither does it seem to care about staff passing on messages that its closure is imminent.

And what of those staff who have complained they have no idea what is going on in the trust?

“Well,” Mr Kershaw says, “I don’t know what they’re saying to you.”

They’re saying they don’t know what’s going on.

He jumps straight back in: “We’ve worked hard on trying to engage better with staff, but communicating with 8,000 people is not the easiest thing to do. But we are committed to it and we are briefing staff.

“What we can’t do is guarantee the answers to these questions because it’s still work that we’re doing. For some staff I can appreciate that’s frustrating and worrying for them.”

Not having firm plans is something of a theme in the present life of the trust. It insists it can’t say whether the urgent care centre will close, nor does it claim to have an exact idea what form its wholesale reorganisation of services – known as it’s “clinical strategy” – is taking.

In November it announced that as part of the shake-up one hospital of the trust’s big three would provide all specialist treatments, as well as an A&E and planned care and maternity units.

The second would offer an A&E and planned care and maternity.

The third site would focus on inpatient elective surgery, like hip replacements, and rehabilitation with a GP-led urgent care centre. Hospital insiders have spoken about Ashford taking the first role, Margate the second and Canterbury the third.

Is that correct? Mr Kershaw wouldn’t say.

“We’ve set out an emerging model and that talks about us using all of our sites as that’s our preference. That third site could be any of the sites because we’ve not decided. We are going through a process of working up what those options are.

“Once we’ve completed our work with our colleagues across Kent and Medway, we will describe it to our staff and then to our patients and the wider population. That’s a consultation that will happen during this year, but that’s not a timetable that I control.

“The consultation plan that comes out will say here are the options and our preferred option is this and then we would say what the sites are.”

When would that be? “It’s not a decision for us, but the expectation is that would happen in the middle of this year.” Summer, then.

Throughout the interview Mr Kershaw responds to questioning in such a way that he appears almost to shed his human skin to reveal an NHS management automaton who never has to pause or think before speaking.

But as the interview winds to its end, Matthew Kershaw the human being re-emerges, a thoroughly agreeable and good-humoured bloke – despite the weight upon his shoulders.

It is pointed out to him that he is a good talker. “I know,” he grins. “I’ve done this before.”