LONG awaited options for the future of health care in west Wiltshire will be published next month, but hospital campaigners have already criticised the plans.

West Wiltshire Primary Care Trust will launch its Pathways For Change consultation document on April 7 and it will be available for public comment for 13 weeks. It will reveal how the cash strapped health trust plans to save millions of pounds. The consultation was due at the end of last year, but was delayed while NHS financial reviews were carried out. Many fear the proposals could spell the end of community hospitals.

Jenny Clements, chairman of Westbury Hospital League of Friends, said: "The word on the street is that all the day patients in Westbury will be out by March 31 and that is what we are most concerned about. "That is what people who use the service, and people from around the town, have been saying. I haven't heard this for definite but then why would anyone tell us?

"The people of Westbury are fed up with how they have been treated by the PCT. I have been to every Pathways For Change meeting and I just want to see whether the consultation document will reflect what we have said."

West Wiltshire MP Andrew Murrison said he was very cautious about the consultation. "Most people are fed up with sham, tick-box consultations of this sort," he said. "In the government White Paper a shift from big, acute hospitals to the community is envisaged, which should lead to an expansion of our community hospitals, not their wholesale closure.

"It's pretty clear what local people want. They want their community hospitals. No amount of expensive, time-consuming consultation is going to change that, whatever spin to this latest initiative the PCT attempts to give."

Nicholas Gillard, from the PCT, said: "We have decided to launch our public consultation now as it has become clear that agreeing a vision for our future health services is an essential building block for our financial recovery, and the two processes, financial recovery and the over-arching vision, must support each other."

A PCT spokesman said the day hospital was due to close but there had been no official announcement about the date.