There has been mixed reactions to news Queen Mary's Hospital, Sidcup, will become a borough hospital under plans to reorganise health services in outer south-east London.

While residents have reacted with anger and disappointment to the decision by a joint committee of the primary care trusts for the four boroughs involved, Queen Mary's is talking up the new opportunities ahead.

At its meeting in London, the joint committee covering Bexley, Bromley, Greenwich and Lewisham, opted for a modified version of option two, one of three options offered to the public for consultation.

This will see the Princess Royal in Farnborough and the Queen Elizabeth in Woolwich become the major acute hospitals for the area.

Both hospitals will also keep their 23-hour day surgery, but lose their planned surgery units.

Lewisham Hospital will keep all its emergency services, including maternity and in-patient paediatrics.

But its surgical A&E service will be limited to 8am to 8pm.

Lewisham will also keep its day surgery and become a centre for planned surgery.

For Queen Mary's there was only ever one option on the table - to be stripped of its emergency services and become a borough hospital.

It was a point raised by Bexley councillor Don Massey at Monday's meeting.

He told the meeting the consultation process "stinks of discrimination".

He added: "There was no realistic option for Queen Mary's in this analysis."

"I know what people think and they believe the process was flawed. It looks wrong."

This was echoed by a member of Bexley Pensioners' Forum who said: "People in Bexley had only one option and most voted against it.

"We were stitched up, and we know it."

Michael Chuter, joint committee chairman, said the whole process had started from the fact none of the hospitals met the minimum clinical guidelines for all their services and would never be able to do so if they remained the same.

Under the agreed proposals, Queen Mary's will become the second centre for planned surgery, also taking all the patients from the existing planned surgery unit at Orpington Hospital, which will close.

It will have a 24-hour urgent care centre; 23-hour day surgery; community, diagnostic and specialist walk-in care such as renal dialysis, cardiology, neurology and cancer care; outpatient services; intermediate in-patient care and rehabilitation including beds and services.

Queen Mary's chief executive Kate Grimes, who was at the London meeting, said: "I know many people will see this as sad news for the hospital, but we believe this decision gives us a great opportunity to be the leading hospital providing planned surgery for around a million people across south-east London."

She said the changes being made in south-east London could become the template for the NHS.

And she explained in the past, hospitals had been seen as in competition for patients, adding they would now work closely together to provide coordinated services for local people.

Others take a less optimistic view and tomorrow the joint overview and scrutiny committee, made up of councillors from the four boroughs, plus representatives from Lambeth, Southwark and Kent County Council, meet at Bexley's civic offices at 7.30pm, to decide their reaction to Monday's decision.

  • For more details on the implications of the proposals and reaction, see the special report in next week's News Shopper.