THE FIGHT to save health services in Wantage and Grove will be taken to the people.

On Monday, Wantage Town Council will deliver a survey to all 11,500 homes in the OX12 postcode to gather people's fears and frustrations.

The questionnaire will ask 28,000 people why local health services are important to them and what they want to keep.

The council is hoping it can use the responses as a weapon against cutbacks threatening Wantage Community Hospital and Wantage Health Centre.

Mayor Steve Trinder said: "We are already banging on the door of the NHS and the Oxfordshire health trusts saying what we're getting isn't good enough.

"We clearly need more capacity at the health centre and the hospital is a wonderful service which provides great care."

Locals were up in arms when Wantage Community Hospital's 12 in-patient beds were closed in July.

Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust said the outdated plumbing system was increasing the risk of a Legionella outbreak.

The trust has the £300,000 to fix the problem but will not spend the money until after a major consultation on transforming health services in Oxfordshire, which launched this week.

Wantage Town Council has led a campaign against what it fears could be the permanent closure of the hospital, and nearly 4,000 people have signed a petition to save it.

Wantage Health Centre, meanwhile, is struggling to cope with too many patients.

Doctors at the centre's two practices – Newbury Street and Church Street – asked NHS England for £4m to expand but had their bid refused in the Autumn.

NHS England refused to tell this paper why.

Days later, leading Oxfordshire GP Joe McManners warned that under current NHS England funding models smaller practices would increasingly have to close and GPs merge together into a shrinking number of centralised surgeries.

Wantage MP Ed Vaizey has planned a meeting with NHS bosses this month to discuss 'a number of local health issues' including the health centre.

This week, Oxfordshire Clinical Commissioning Group – the group of GPs which applies for NHS funding to run health services in the county – launched its consultation on transforming health services to make them more efficient.

The group hopes to save millions by cutting the number of hospital beds, reducing the number of qualified nurses and potentially downgrading maternity services in the county.

The survey, part of a wider ‘sustainability and transformation plan’ (STP) being drawn up for Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire and West Berkshire, is the reason Oxford Health delayed repairing Wantage Community Hospital's plumbing system.

The consultation, dubbed 'The Big Health and Care Consultation', launched online at oxfordshireccg.nhs.uk.

Oxfordshire Clinical Commissioning Group’s north-east locality clinical director Dr Stephen Attwood said: “Our primary motivation is to provide the safest service that we can for patients, and getting the right clinical services for the population. The detail has to be worked up.”

Mayor Trinder said the town council's questionnaire aimed to raise awareness of the wider survey, but also give the council its own responses so it did not have to rely on the CCG's results to know what local people really think.

Finished surveys can be returned to The Beacon on Portway, Wantage, and it can also be completed online at surveymonkey.co.uk/r/wantage.

The deadline is February 17.