Over a thousand people have responded to a local weekly’s campaign to save the nearest serious A&E unit to its rural patch.

The Welshpool-based County Times joined forces with its town council to garner support from readers after October’s announcement that serious A&E services would be concentrated at either Royal Shrewsbury Hospital or Telford’s Princess Royal Hospital from 2013.

The whole of Shrewsbury’s A&E is not under threat, just services dealing with trauma and serious emergencies.

The Telford hospital is a further 15 to 20 minutes away from the County Times core Mid Wales readership area.

Campaign slips were published in the NWN Media weekly with 1,015 adding their names to the protest list hoping to keep serious A&E services in Shrewsbury.

The County Times campaign will now be presented to Tom Taylor, chief executive Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust.

County Times chief reporter Richard Jones said: “This is absolutely fantastic response.

“It just goes to show how important the people of Mid Wales think the serious A&E department in Shrewsbury is to us.

“It has been a fantastic three-way effort between ourselves, Welshpool Town Council and most importantly the concerned public.

“These slips hold such a lot of weight, much more than a simple petition, because people have gone to the effort to express their reasons for wanting the A&E department kept in Shrewsbury.

“Anybody can sign their name when asked to on the street, but in this instance people have picked up the paper, wrote down their name, address and comment, cut the slip out and then paid to post it back to the newspaper’s office.

“To receive more than a thousand campaign slips in such a rural area is tremendous.”