BY the time the sun sets today, a little of our faith in common sense will have been restored and the health of people in the county will be looking forward to better times.

That's our firm expectation, after a combination of Strategic Health Authority grants and cash from South Worcestershire Primary Care Trust's own coffers is agreed to pay for eight doctors' surgeries to be modernised or replaced over the next three years.

The work has been in peril since the Government changed the way funding was allocated to such PCT projects.

It was deplorable that the Trust had the rug pulled from beneath its feet by faceless Whitehall mandarins.

Amid much cross-party political pressure - a unity of purpose for which MPs Mike Foster, Peter Luff and Sir Michael Spicer have our praise - the Evening News' Save Our Surgeries petition demonstrated what you, the public, thought of the situation.

When news leaked that the PCT had cancelled a meeting with Health Minister John Hutton, the outlook suddenly began to look more hopeful.

No one's saying whether the U-turn was the result of public pressure typified by the petition, or if it was down to the pure, common sense fact that, as guardians of primary health in the south of the county, it was their responsibility to deliver the modern surgeries, as promised.

Whichever, the truth of the old adage that where there's a will there's a way looks like being proved. A big vote of thanks is in order for everyone who has made that possible.