Bidders in a scramble to run Stafford and Cannock hospitals

A&E, maternity and intensive care could all be withdrawn from Stafford under proposals for a £70 million downgrade published after watchdog Monitor ordered a review.

The same experts deemed the trust financially and clinically unsustainable.

While the special administrators at the trust have yet to make any decisions on what should happen to services at Stafford and Cannock, the opportunity to provide care at the trust has been advertised in the health sector.

Special administrator Alan Bloom said: "I think we've had a total of approximately 40 expressions of interest. They have been from all over the country.

"We will have a better idea of what each provider can offer by Monday or Tuesday of next week when the deadline for submissions is over.

"We've mostly had interest from public sector providers but there have been a couple of private providers as well." New Cross Hospital in Wolverhampton and University Hospital in Stoke-on-Trent are among the bidders.

But Save Stafford Hospital activist Cheryl Porter says she believes acute services should be kept in Stafford and campaigners 'will not give up'.

"The fact that people from all over the country have applied to provide these services is really frightening," said Mrs Porter.

"These people are not local and they do not know what we need here.

"But we will not get disheartened by this. We've got people power here.

"We need acute services at Stafford for safety reasons. They can throw everything at us, but we're not going to give up. They might have all these people from across the country, but we had 50,000 people march in Stafford town centre. Those people do not just go away.

"If we have to have another march, then so be it.

If we have to march to London, we will."

A series of three meetings have now been held by the administrators at the trust to give people further information about the process they are undergoing to form plans for the two sites.

Mr Bloom said he felt the meetings had gone well, as around 1,000 people attended.

"People have shown a great amount of interest, passion, care and concern at these meetings," said Mr Bloom.

"It's been very good for me to have the opportunity to hear people's concerns so early on in the process."

He said the administrators would present a draft report for the trust by the end of June.

But Mrs Porter said she felt the meetings were 'rubbish' and left many questions unanswered.

She said: "They don't want to talk to us.

"Overall these meetings haven't done anything at all other than getting people angry.

"There were questions asked at each which weren't answered. It's been more of a lip service than anything."