ACCIDENT and emergency services at Charing Cross Hospital are 'under threat of closure' according to the leader of Hammersmith and Fulham Council.

Cash-strapped Imperial College NHS Trust denied national newspaper reports that it was planning to sell the Fulham Palace Road hospital to plug its deficit last month while admitting it is looking into ways of reviewing its services.

Council bosses grilled Imperial's director of performance, planning and information Lesley Stephen at a select committee last week but say she was unable to give assurances that the A&E service at Charing Cross would be maintained.

That has led Councillor Stephen Greenhalgh to demand the trust to reveal its long-term plans for the hospital.

He said: “The trust has a massive £50m budget deficit and is conducting a major review of where hospital services will be located in the future.

“It is clear that the 24/7 A&E at Charing Cross is under threat of closure and Imperial cannot be surprised at the growing public concern about their plans.”

Labour's Hammersmith MP Andy Slaughter admits he was surprised by the council outburst this week.

Plans to shut Charing Cross first surfaced in the early 1990s when a major public campaign forced them to be shelved.

Mr Slaughter claims the borough Tories re-ignited the closure storm in 2005 by spreading false rumours that the Labour government would shut the hospital.

He said: “Are they in denial? They are the ones who said it was going to close when it wasn't and now it is under threat because of what their government are doing.

“After spreading false rumours about the prospect of closures they are now acting surprised that this is a real possibility and looking for someone to blame.

“But we know how to blame and it is their government colleagues. The level of cuts that Imperial have to make means there will be significant changes to services and redundancies.

“That could well mean the closure of entire sites or downgrading of sites.”

Imperial College NHS Trust remained unable to offer clear-cut assurances over Charing Cross Hospital to the Chronicle this week.

A spokesman said: “We are developing a long-term strategy for all our clinical services with our commissioners and West Middlesex University Hospital to ensure we meet the future needs of our patients.

“As part of this work we have been meeting regularly with our local council to discuss these plans, which are being led by our clinicians and local GPs.

“We expect to share our initial findings with our patients, staff and stakeholders in late autumn and until them it would be inappropriate and misleading to comment on the detail regarding specific services.

“We would like to reassure patients and the public that we envisage having clinical services on all of our sites in the future and any significant changes to the services we provide would be subject to full public consultation.”