VILLAGERS have been told there will be full consultation before any decisions are taken about the future of the Mount Hospital, Bishopstoke.

A campaign to safeguard facilities currently offered by the Mount to the elderly people of Bishopstoke and Eastleigh was launched in March in the wake of health trust proposals to switch 36 beds to Winchester's Royal Hampshire County Hospital.

Staff were told there would be no job cuts with everyone being given the option to carry on working at the Royal Hampshire County.

But trust chief executive Rod Halls is also on record as saying that the objective is to have moved most services from the Mount by the end of the calendar year.

The future of the Mount has been under the microscope for ten years. But villagers who attended Bishopstoke's annual parish meeting were assured that no firm decision had yet been taken.

However, Winchester and Eastleigh Trust's project leader Jayne Turnbull made it clear that retaining inpatient beds at Bishopstoke was not an option.

She told the meeting: "We would love to retain the Mount. The project started because we cannot afford to do that and we have to find other ways of keeping the services at the Mount. They cannot go on as they are.

"Although the care is absolutely excellent the buildings are not and it is not right for people to be provided care in the standard of those facilities."

Later, she said: "There has been absolutely no decision about what is going to happen."

Pauline Owen from the Eastleigh and Test Valley South Primary Care Trust said: "We think it is very important that the community facilities currently based at the Mount are provided locally in Eastleigh for you."