A maternity unit at risk of being downgraded to one run by midwives has been saved.

Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust has managed to recruit enough specialist nurses to keep the special care baby unit at the Princess Royal Hospital in Haywards Heath running as it is.

The trust has been struggling to find the advanced neonatal nurse practitioners (ANNPs) who are qualified to provide the medical care usually given by junior doctors.

However, at a board meeting yesterday, director of clinical operations Jenny Thomas said a sufficient number of people had been recruited.

The trust decided to bring in the nurses to keep the unit going because junior doctors cannot be used at the unit as it is no longer accredited by the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health due to the lack of a children's ward.

If the trust had not been successful it would have meant the unit becoming midwife-led and dealing with between 400 and 500 straightforward births a year.

More than 2,000 women who would normally have used the unit would have faced long journeys to other units including the Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton, Worthing Hospital and Eastbourne District General Hospital.

Ms Thomas said: "A lot of work has been done to recruit these members of staff and so it is good news all round that we have managed to secure these posts.

"At one stage we thought we would not be able to find them."

Ms Thomas said Mid Sussex Primary Care Trust had agreed to pick up the additional costs of maintaining the maternity services for this year and it will be subject to future negotiations when annual budgets were drawn up.

The trust approached nurses throughout Europe, in Canada, the United States and Australia to fill the vacancies needed to keep the special care baby unit going.

The international advertising campaign led to a number of ANNPs expressing interest in the positions, which are worth up to £41,000.

The appointment of the nurses and the threat of changes at the Princess Royal were part of the Best Care, Best Place consultation, which included a number of changes to healthcare in Brighton and Hove and Mid Sussex.

They included the controversial decision to transfer all emergency operations that might have been done at the Princess Royal to the Royal Sussex instead.

The consultation process has been criticised by residents and Mid Sussex District Council, which is calling for the whole consultation to be called in by Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt.

Coun Paddy Henry, of the council, was relieved the specialist nurses had been recruited but concerned the Princess Royal could struggle to hold on to them.

He said: "It is good news the unit is staying open but the question will be whether it is sustainable or these nurses will leave."

Coun Henry said the Princess Royal should be taken out of the Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust so that there was no question of patients being sent to the coast if facilities could not be maintained in the Mid Sussex area.

He said: "In six or 12 months we will be back in the situation of having a midwife-led unit."

Nicholas Soames, the MP for Mid Sussex, said: "I am absolutely delighted.

"We have made the strongest representations to the health authority, the managers of the primary care trust and the Secretary of State to get this done.

"I congratulate Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust for going out and getting these people - they are rarer than hen's teeth."