AT last the truth is out! The real reason for the downgrading of Kidderminster Hospital has been admitted.

The health correspondent of BBC Midlands Today, Andrew Tomlinson, in the regional news magazine after the 6pm news on Wednesday, August 23, quoting NHS managers said: "By scaling down services in Kidderminster we will be able to improve them everywhere else."

We have realised this for a long time. How much strife could have been avoided if those in authority had come out into the open and told us this three years ago?

In a spirit of honesty and openness we could then have worked with them to lessen the blow here and to help work out a fairer plan acceptable to the whole county.

Instead we have been treated as idiots as they have attempted to obscure the issue under a cloud of imagined improvements for the people of north west Worcestershire and south Shropshire.

Judging by replies being received from Government ministers, the truth has been withheld from them also, unless they are party to the same apparent deception.

RT TAYLOR

Save Kidderminster Hospital campaign chairman

Church Walk, Kidderminster