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Candlelit vigils will be held outside Ealing and Central Middlesex hospitals as part of the on-going campaign to save local hospital services.

Save Our Hospitals campaigners are staging the peaceful protests between 5-6.30pm to start a week of activity across the capital by Londoners opposed to reductions in hospital services.

Under NHS North West London’s plans, four hospitals in the region would be downgraded – including closing the accident and emergency departments at Ealing, Central Middlesex, Hammersmith and Charing Cross hospitals.

Other services, including intensive care, emergency surgery, paediatrics and maternity units at some of those hospitals, would also close.

The vigils will be the latest in a series of protests held in the borough to oppose the plans. Local people marched in their thousands across the borough last September to a mass rally on Ealing Common and campaigners estimate more than 80,000 residents across the region have signed petitions asking for plans to be dropped.

Last week, the council received the NHS’s official response to comments made during the public consultation that refutes many of the council’s concerns about the proposals. On 19 February a meeting of NHS officials will decide if the plans will proceed.

Councillor Julian Bell, leader of the council, said: "I want to encourage as many people as possible to come along and join one of these vigils."

"The NHS bureaucrats behind these deeply flawed proposals seem to think that they can railroad them through, regardless of the views of local people or the council."