PLANS for a new £150m hospital to treat thousands of Hampshire's sickest patients have been thrown into serious doubt.

Health bosses look set to halt proposals for a critical treatment centre between Winchester and Basingstoke, which would centralise emergency and acute treatment in the centre of the county.

They have been advised that the scheme cannot proceed at this stage to formal consultation and without formal public consultation the hospital cannot go ahead.

However, Hampshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, which put forward the plans, has confirmed the scheme remains on the table.

The proposal, for land north of the M3’s junction 7, would offer 24-hour consultant care and include an £18.5m cancer treatment unit to centralise chemotherapy.

Most services at the Royal Hampshire County Hospital in Winchester and Basingstoke and Andover hospitals would stay put, the trust has said.

But in a letter sent to stakeholders, West Hampshire and North Hampshire Clinical Commissioning Groups, which pay trusts including Hampshire Hospitals to provide health services, said it had reviewed the finances.

It said the conclusion, which will be put forward for approval to both CCG boards next week, was that "this proposal cannot go forward to formal consultation at present.

"The primary reason for this is that the predicted costs of services supplied in this way significantly exceed the funds available to commissioners."

The recommendation instead is to redesign health and social care across north and mid Hampshire, but the letter said it was "still possible" the proposed critical centre "might emerge" as part of that redesign.

Winchester councillor Martin Tod, on a county council committee that scrutinised the plans, said: "At every stage I have been concerned that I couldn't see how the numbers were going to add up.

"It's hard to see how two hospital sites to three would be more cost effective at a time when our focus is meant to be concentrating on more care in the community."

He said he also wanted reassurance that services for people in Winchester would be protected whether or not the centre went ahead.

In February, it was reported how Hampshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust was running at a deficit of £4.4m for the financial year to date.

And Cllr Tod estimated hundreds of thousands of pounds must have been spent so far on bringing plans for the new hospital forward, including a public exhibition earlier this year, but the trust was not able to give details of costs to date.

He said if the numbers did not add up then the trust needed to "stop throwing good money after bad" and "start looking at other ways to tackle the real challenges of our health system".

Mary Edwards, trust Chief Executive, said it was "disappointed" that the consultation was not going ahead yet, but said ever increasing pressure on services made the need for a solution even more pressing.

"We fully appreciate the challenging financial context that the NHS faces, we are working with our commissioners, and we will continue to pursue solutions that are affordable and deliver high quality patient care.”