Karen Hoy reports on the fight to keep the Nigel Porter cancer unit in Brighton amid mounting arguments in favour of a move to Haywards Heath.

Health bosses announced earlier this year that the Nigel Porter Breast Care Unit at the Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton, needed to expand.

But there was no room on the site for a new, larger home for at least ten years while current development schemes were taking place.

Because hospital bosses could not find an alternative site at the Royal Sussex, they made a formal proposal to move the unit to the Princess Royal Hospital in Haywards Heath.

The proposal was made as part of a restructuring of services after the Brighton Health Care NHS Trust and the Mid Sussex Trust announced they were to merge early next year.

The proposal to move the unit 15 miles away shocked readers of The Argus and we launched a petition to keep the unit in Brighton, collecting more than 30,000 signatures in ten days.

But some readers in the Mid Sussex area felt their views were being overlooked.

Mid Sussex District Councillor Anne Jones, of Burgess Hill, said people in her area welcomed the news that the breast unit could be located in Haywards Heath.

She said: "Having lived in Hove, I know very well the problems of what it's like living in Brighton and accessing hospital services with the traffic. We have looked at the access to Mid Sussex and it's easier to get to here than Brighton from most places in the area.

"We also need centres of excellence for health and this unit at Haywards Heath would be geared to the needs of the patients. It will be purpose-built and somewhere where people will be pleased to come to for treatment."

Brighton Health Care chief executive Stuart Welling has also trumpeted the benefits of moving the unit to Haywards Heath, highlighting the fact that the existing unit in Brighton was failing to meet Government standards and the move was necessary.

But medical experts said the new unit would not be able to label itself as a centre of excellence because it would not have a radiotherapy unit on site. Patients would have to travel back to Brighton for radiotherapy.

Retired consultant surgeon Nigel Porter, after whom the Brighton unit was named, said the separation of radiotherapy and the main breast cancer unit was not the best way forward for the successful treatment of breast cancer.

Mr Porter, now 76, of Henfield, said: "I appreciate that the demand has outstripped the space available, the unit does need enlarging and it can't remain on its present site but the problem goes back a very long time with the Royal Sussex County site."

Mr Porter said care should be provided on one site. He said to separate the service, as the proposals planned to, would not improve it. He said: "It is fragmenting the service. It is not, in terms of top class health care, a good idea."

The current Nigel Porter Breast Care Unit treats approximately 2,700 patients each year who discover they have breast lumps and require treatment.

Health chiefs say about 2,000 of those who use the service annually come from the Brighton and Hove area, with a further 200 referred from Mid Sussex.

The number of patients travelling to Brighton from Mid Sussex is low because there is already a small breast cancer unit at the Princess Royal with one breast cancer surgeon.

When the proposal to transfer the unit was made, health chiefs indicated there was an existing building at the Princess Royal which could be used for a new unit.

The Argus has a copy of the architects' report which says that building is not suitable and a purpose-built unit would have to be created at Haywards Heath with a suggested cost in excess of £7 million.

The report says building a unit at the Royal Sussex County would cost £10.5 million if built now.

So the trust would have to spend £7 million now and face a further multi-million pound bill in ten years time when the unit was returned to Brighton.