CONTROVERSIAL changes to emergency health services in Maidstone and West Kent have been given the go-ahead by Health Secretary Alan Johnson.

Mr Johnson has agreed in principle to move emergency orthopaedic and general surgery from Maidstone Hospital to the Kent and Sussex Hospital in Tunbridge Wells.

The changes mean anyone seriously injured in an accident or road crash will no longer be taken to Maidstone Hospital, but either the Kent and Sussex, or A&E units in Medway, Dartford, or Ashford.

Campaigners have been fighting the changes for more than a year, claiming the removal of the two forms of surgery amount to a downgrading of the A&E department at Maidstone Hospital.

Opponents also raised concerns that patients west of Maidstone would face journeys of up to an hour to get to the Kent and Sussex Hospital.

But the West Kent Primary Care Trust (PCT) say a consultant-led A&E service will remain at Maidstone Hospital and that 55,000 people will still be treated as emergency cases there.

Mr Johnson’s announcement comes after an independent expert on NHS changes, the Independent Reconfiguration Panel, recommended the changes went ahead, in a report given to Mr Johnson at the end of November.

Steve Phoenix, chief executive of the West Kent Primary Care Trust, said: "I am very pleased that, after hearing evidence from objectors and supporters, the panel concluded that it was indeed in the best interests of patients.

"Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust will now draw up detailed implementation plans, which will be scrutinised by an external review panel convened by the PCT and chaired by a leading independent orthopaedic surgeon.

"Only when that panel feels that every point raised by the IRP has been satisfactorily addressed will the implementation plans come to West Kent PCT’s Board, which could be in March 2008."