DOCUMENTS giving details of the consultation on the future of hospital services in East Kent should be released within the next week.

People in the area will be able to say what they think about the plans for change throughout December, January and February.

Public meetings will be held throughout East Kent during two weeks in February.

Campaigner John Smith told the East Kent Health Authority board meeting that a 1992 Royal College of Surgeons report said the casualty unit at the Queen Mother Hospital in Margate should be supporting the one at Kent and Canterbury. Any alternative plans would be unacceptable the report said, added Mr Smith.

Health authority chairman Frank Stewart said the issue of re-organisation was a big problem. "It is like sums," he said. "You have to come to the best common denominator."

David Astley, chief executive of the East Kent Hospitals NHS Trust, said the Royal College of Surgeons said a population of 500,000 was needed to train doctors. "We are making a major decision and it is important we get as much consent as possible and tell people what it is necessary to do to get the best possible patient care."

Mr Smith said he believed that the problems did not rest with Kent and Canterbury but with the financial problems facing the Queen Mother Hospital.

Campaigner Carole Brett asked what the health authority and trust had done to make sure the Government knew of the opposition to the changes. Mark Outhwaite, chief executive of the East Kent Health Authority, said the Government was well aware of this.

"We have to steer our way through this," he said. "We do not have the luxury of doing nothing."

Mr Astley said the re-organisation issue was an emotional one and the pressures in East Kent were huge. "It is very important that we use these three months," he said. "We need to improve the service and it cannot stay as it is. We are doing this in the interests of patients."

Dr John Dyer, chairman of Channel Primary Care Group, said whatever sort of hospital there was at Canterbury would still deal with 80 per cent of the people who turned up there.