Councillors have faxed a letter to Tony Blair pleading with him to save their hospital.

Haywards Heath mayor Richard Goddard and Mid Sussex councillor Paddy Henry said they were desperate to stop half a million people losing health services in Sussex.

Accident and emergency and maternity services are threatened with the axe at the Princess Royal Hospital in Haywards Heath, as are similar operations at Worthing Hospital and St Richard's Hospital in Chichester.

The councillors said the loss of services at the PRH would sound the death knell for the hospital, which opened in 1991.

Coun Henry said: "We need the intervention of the Prime Minister to stop this. We're desperate now - we are on our knees.

"There are some people saying it's due to a lack of funding that this is happening but it's nothing of the sort. The opposite is the truth - there's been more money but it has been consistently and, in my opinion, almost determinedly mismanaged."

The councillors' letter, which has also been sent to Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt, reports a "sequence of withdrawals and reductions in clinical services" at the hospital, placing its survival "in imminent jeopardy".

It asks for a Government inquiry into "gross, long-running mismanagement of health services across West Sussex".

Mid Sussex MP Nicholas Soames is organising a march in support of the hospital with Lewes MP Norman Baker and Arundel MP Nick Herbert. They expect thousands to congregate on Saturday to shout down NHS plans to downgrade the services.

Emergency trauma surgery has already been lost at Haywards Heath hospital following the Best Care, Best Place consultation in 2005. But Coun Henry said the results of the new NHS Fit For The Future consultation could mean the end of the hospital, leaving almost 500,000 patients across Mid Sussex, Horsham and Crawley without services.

He said: "Fit For The Future will just drive the nail into the coffin. Once in place I'm sure it will mean the closure of the hospital.

This is what Tony Blair must realise, as well as the failure of watchdog committees to act.

"I don't think Mr Blair is aware all this is going on. He's devolved Government policy to local NHS leaders but what he doesn't realise is how they have failed us."

Dame Vera Lynn will join the march, which starts at Clair Park in Haywards Heath, on Saturday at 9.30am.