PROTESTERS gathered in Bournemouth town centre at the weekend in defiance of proposed changes to health services in Dorset

The event, organised by the Keep Our NHS Public Dorset group, took place at Horseshoe Common on Saturday.

NHS staff were joined by members of the public and representatives from a number of campaign groups, unions and political parties to hear speakers united in the fight to "safeguard local NHS services" and to hear live music and peruse numerous stalls.

One of the event organisers, Damien Stone, told the Daily Echo: "We wanted to get all the other campaign groups involved together at the same place.

"We have the Dorset Health Campaign here, the Kingfisher Campaign, the Save Our Beds campaign.

"All the different campaign groups are now able to talk about what they are doing in the fight to safeguard NHS services locally.

"Now we are going to build a website with all of the campaign groups on it, bringing everyone together, because none of the campaign groups were really talking to one another."

The group was demonstrating against controversial proposals to shake-up health services across the county, including cutting community hospitals and making Royal Bournemouth Hospital a major emergency centre, with Poole Hospital reserved for planned care as part of Dorset CCG’s Clinical Services Review.

Mr Stone explained: "We want to highlight the farce of spending more than £150 million on making Bournemouth Hospital the main emergency hospital instead of Poole.

"This has been described as 'moving the kitchen in to the bathroom and the bathroom in to the kitchen' at a time when the NHS needs all the money it can get. What a waste of money?

"This will mean more people having to travel further to an A&E department in Bournemouth, the most congested town outside of London.

"Many of the proposed cuts announced by the Dorset CCG are unnecessary, damaging and reckless."