THE FIGHT to save Wantage Community Hospital from closure has ramped up this week as Oxford Health continually fails to satisfy residents there is any need to close the facility this summer.

The NHS trust, which has successfully kept Legionella bacteria at bay in the hospital's water system since it was discovered in January 2015, is still planning to close the hospital's 12 inpatient beds this summer because of the potential risk.

Maternity services and physiotherapy will stay open, it has promised.

County, district and town councillor Jenny Hannaby is tomorrow planning to put questions to Oxfordshire's Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee in the hopes the body can put pressure on Oxford Health to reverse the decision.

Mrs Hannaby told the Herald the trust had acted incorrectly in the first place by not running a public consultation on its plan to close the hospital.

She said: "Instead, they went straight in on the health and safety risk which, of course, there isn't because there is no legionella in the system now."

As the Herald reported last week, a member of the hospital campaign who has expertise in health and safety was allowed to visit the site with Oxford Health staff and make an independent assessment if the state of the plumbing.

He agreed with the trust's own assessment that the pipework did not meet current legislation for plumbing, meaning it will be have to be replaced, and Wantage Town Councillors and campaigners have agreed with the trust that the hospital should be closed at some point for this work to be carried out.

But the trust is facing increasing pressure to explain why it needs to close the 12 inpatient beds now, when it has successfully been using water treatments to keep legionella below detectable levels.

At a meeting at The Beacon in Wantage in April, trust directors told more than 200 residents that in January there had bee no detectable legionella in the water, thanks to a hydrogen peroxide "flush" of the whole system.

But they said they wanted to close the hospital, or as much of it as possible, before the legionella could have a chance to multiply forcing an emergency evacuation.

The trust is planning to run a county-wide consultation on the future of all community hospitals in Oxfordshire this winter, and campaigners fear if Wantage hospital is closed at the time it will never reopen.

Oxford Health spokesperson Charvy Narain told the Herald: "We have been monitoring levels weekly since January and treating the water system, in order to eradicate legionella. This has been successful from January up until now."

But she said: "The microbiologists’ advice to us is that a return to high legionella levels is 'almost inevitable'.

"While we have not formally calculated and used a percentage to describe that risk, however you wish to express it, the meaning of the expert advice is clear."

Wantage Community Hospital was built in Garston Lane in 1926 and 1927 after residents raised £8,000 to build it - the equivalent of £239,760 in today's money.