The A&E unit at Crawley Hospital closed to patients last summer

Professor Sir George Alberti was asked to review A&E services in Crawley by local Labour MP Laura Moffatt.

Crawley Hospital's A&E department shut in August 2004 with the services moving to East Surrey Hospital, in Redhill.

Prof Alberti met campaigners, health managers and unions during his second visit to the town on Monday.

'Walk-in' centre

Following changes to the town's A&E services, the East Surrey Hospital, which is just under 10 miles away from Crawley, became the main emergency care centre.

A �19.2m development programme began at Crawley Hospital to create a walk-in centre to treat minor injuries, a pre-assessment clinic for surgery patients, a new day ward and a rehabilitation unit.

Other schemes include a chronic disease management service and a unit specialising in older persons' mental health.

But earlier this year, petitioners in Crawley collected 30,000 signatures calling for a new hospital, with an emergency unit, and saying Redhill was too far for critically-ill patients to travel.

Professor Alberti spoke to concerned local people on Monday

Ms Moffatt said: "There's a lot of scepticism out there so I thought it was right that we get the A&E tsar to just come and talk and I felt he did that in a very honest way."

Prof Alberti listened to the campaigners' points of view, concluding that the change was not unreasonable but had not gone as smoothly as it could.

"We will never have all the care we want," said Prof Alberti.

"What we have to do is to redistribute in such a way that we can build up community care, that we don't focus so much on the hospital sector.

"And that's when we will begin to see dramatic changes and improvements for people's health and health services."