COUNCILLORS have vowed to fight plans to give Bicester’s new hospital no overnight beds.

Cherwell District Council members unanimously backed a motion to press NHS Oxfordshire for beds.

The primary care trust said it is unlikely to replace the town’s 12-bed hospital like-for-like and these would be provided on a care home at a chosen site.

A similar move was rejected five years ago along with a ‘primary care centre’ with facilities such as x-rays.

Les Sibley, hospital campaigner and district councillor for Bicester West, said: “What they have given us is the take-it-or-leave-it option of 2005 whereby they close the hospital, buy in care beds and have a primary care centre.

“Bicester is set to expand and soon there will be 100,000 people relying on these services, which will be totally inadequate.

“The fight will continue.”

Barry Wood, leader of Cherwell District Council, said: “We should do everything in our power, as a district council, to encourage the fruition of this great project.”

But Cathryn Bullimore, communications manager for NHS Oxfordshire, said: “We can’t afford to do it as a stand-alone bedded hospital.

“The only way we can afford it is as part of a larger facility and chances are it will be part of a care home.

“There would be 11 or 12 beds that would be NHS-funded and the care involved would be clinical specification of care which would be exactly the same as people get in the community hospital.”

The authority is seeking interest from developers.

There are three potential sites: the hospital’s current home at Kings End, land at the Kingsmere development, off Middleton Stoney and Oxford Roads, and the former claypits site off London Road.

Mr Sibley and Bicester Town Council member Nick Cotter have called for the London Road site to be dropped, warning of contaminated land, parking and access problems.

But Owen Morton, spokesman for Oxfordshire County Council, which owns the site, said it had been ‘thorough independent scrutiny’ from the Environment Agency and Cherwell District Council’s environmental health department.