AN MP has spoken out against "trivial" and "bureaucratic" rules that have caused a Morecambe Bay health trust to lose its top ranking three-star status, reports Michaela Robinson-Tate.

Tim Collins said that the controversial decision to downgrade Morecambe Bay Hospitals NHS Trust from three stars to two stars had damaged its chances of "building a better tomorrow".

The MP for Westmorland and Lonsdale was prompted to speak out because this week's decision, by independent regulator the Healthcare Commission, means that the hospitals trust can no longer continue with its application for Foundation Trust status.

"This is a major setback to the hopes so many had placed that Foundation Trust status would bring extra resources for healthcare in our area," said Mr Collins.

"The fact that the Morecambe Bay Hospitals NHS Trust has lost one of its three stars because of reasons which will strike many as trivial, politically correct or pettily bureaucratic underlines the need to move immediately to a system whereby all hospitals are automatically given Foundation Trust status.

"Our local hospitals are no worse today than they were yesterday, despite this strange decision. Sadly, however, their chances of building a better tomorrow have been badly damaged."

Trust chief executive Ian Cumming said he was disappointed by the news, but pledged the trust would be back at three stars next year. Two stars indicate a trust performing well overall, but which has not quite reached consistently high standards.

He maintained the trust was within a "whisker" of maintaining its three stars. One of the reasons for its downgrading was a failure to record on computer the ethnic group of sufficient numbers of its patients.

Mr Cumming said that because 95 per cent of its patients were defined as white British the trust had not given the statistics much emphasis, but he accepted it was a target that had not been met.

Mr Cumming said that the clinical area in which they had not performed well was the percentage of patients suffering from a stroke who were treated through a dedicated stroke unit in 2003/04. However, such units opened in Kendal, Lancaster and Barrow by March 2004, and so next year's figure should be near 100 per cent.

Mr Cumming insisted the £175,000 Depart-ment of Health grant to help it become a Foundation Trust was not wasted, as the trust board would probably only defer its application by 12 to 14 months.

"We are disappointed, first of all for the staff who have worked incredibly hard," he said.

"I'm reasonably confident, in areas that matter to patients, we are still performing well but using this particular set of indicators there are one or two areas in which we have been assessed as not being among the best in the country."

Meanwhile, Morecambe Bay Primary Care Trust was also nursing its wounds. Although it maintained a two-star rating for most of its services, it dropped from two stars to a zero rating for mental health services, which are assessed separately. The trust is now waiting to hear if it will be offered additional NHS help as a result.

Chief executive Leigh Griffin said that not all the targets that were missed were directly to do with patient care. However, he was concerned at the trust's failure to set up "individual care programmes" for all patients.

Dr Griffin promised that the PCT would look carefully at the areas that were highlighted. He also said that after three years of providing mental health services, the PCT would examine whether that was still the best way of organising care.

"I can absolutely give a commitment to the public of the Bay we have got pretty good mental health services now and they will significantly improve," he said.