Politicians have have told the Department of Health they want an end to the healthcare review threatening St Helier Hospital.

Council leader Ruth Dombey and MPs Paul Burstow and Tom Brake visited the Department for Health yesterday to press the case for St Helier Hospital with new the health minister Anna Soubry.

On Wednesday the Better Services Better Value review recommended that two hospitals out of St Helier, Epsom, Kingston or Croydon University Hospital should lose their A&E and maternity departments.

Mr Brake set out his concerns for the "very flaky" assurances being made by BSBV about cutting the number of people using A&E.

He said: "The minister understands the overwhelming importance of St Helier Hospital to hundreds of thousands of local people.

"We believe the BSBV process should be stopped now. The CCGs will take responsibility for commissioning services from the 1st of April. We need to just leave it for them to deal with it.

"We set out some factors about what has already been achieved at St Helier's maternity unit and they are things BSBV are asking to be achieved by 2015."

He said they wanted the demolition of Ferguson House to proceed in order to prove that the £219m re-build of the hospital is alive and well.

Mr Burstow said: "We were able to impress upon the minister the failure of the NHS BSBV team to convince clinicians that their plans to close A&Es and maternity units are sound. 

"We'll carry on campaigning for the plug to be pulled on these disastrous proposals."

Coun Ruth Dombey said: "The campaign to save vital services at St Helier Hospital got an adrenaline shot today.

"We discussed our concerns with the health minister who listened carefully and was clearly shocked that the uncertainty about St Helier's future had been dragging on for so long.

"We'll carry on piling on the pressure to save our local health services."