The Keep Our St Helier Hospital Campaign (KOSHH) has gathered 10,775 signatures in its latest petition against removing acute services at Epsom or St Helier hospitals.

Campaigners claim the Epsom and St Helier Hospital Trust’s plan to merge acute care will put lives in danger, due to longer journey times for patients and increased strain on services at the single site.

Campaigner Dave Ash said: “It’s going to result in loss of life. We’re in this for everyone, we’re not in this for just one hospital. Of all the things our country has done, the NHS is the finest commission of any nation.”

Under the proposals, Epsom and St Helier Hospital Trust is currently trying to get public support for building a single new acute facility at either the St Helier or Epsom hospital site, or a possible third location, with costs predicted to be around £400 million.

Acute services which would be moved include emergency surgery, critical care, complex emergency medicine, births, major A&E and children’s overnight wards.

But the trust says that that plans would save lives, not endanger them, and says a single consultant-led facility would be safer for expectant mothers and other patients requiring acute care, and that there would be less reliance on temporary staff.

Currently, if something goes wrong in childbirth, women at St Helier have to be taken by ambulance to St George’s Hospital in Tooting.

Daniel Elkeles, chief executive of the trust, said: “These changes will save lives, not endanger them. Our senior clinicians and nurses would not support a proposal that would have any adverse effect on our patients.

“There is a wealth of evidence to show that consolidating NHS services leads to better outcomes for patients, including those who have suffered a stroke, heart attack or trauma.

“Locally, centralising our hip fracture service onto the St Helier site has had a significantly positive impact on our patients, and we now have the second lowest mortality rates in the whole of the country.”

KOSHH intend to deliver their petition in person to every Clinical Commissioning Group in South West London: Sutton, Merton, Croydon, Richmond, Kingston, and Wandsworth.