A PROTEST march through Enfield will take place today in the latest in a series of attempts to save Chase Farm Hospital.

Campaigners from the North East London Council of Action have said they are prepared to occupy the hospital to prevent wards being closed and services moved away to polyclinics.

And they are calling on residents from across the borough to join them on the streets from noon.

The march comes after Enfield Council decided not to appeal a High Court ruling which rejected its request for a judicial review of the endorsement of the planned changes by health secretary Alan Johnson.

Under the downgrading, part of a reconfiguration of services across the capital, A&E services at Chase Farm would be cut from 24 to 12 hours a day.

The hospital in The Ridgeway, Enfield, would also see its children’s and maternity departments move to North Middlesex University and Barnet hospitals.

Protesters will gather at the war memorial in Enfield Green at noon before marching through Enfield Town to a rally at the St Paul’s Centre in Church Street at 2pm.

Bill Rogers, secretary for the campaign group, said: “Enfield Council has given up the fight to save Chase Farm Hospital. But the local people of Enfield will not.

“Barnet and North Middlesex Hospitals are too far to go; their services are already stretched so patients’ lives will be lost.”

He added that the kinds of community-based centres the Government was proposing to replace Chase Farm with were “ripe for selling off to big business, to make profits out of people’s health.”