CAMPAIGNERS fighting to save Harefield Hospital have been heartened by further setbacks in plans to move its services to a new superhospital in London.

A proposal to house services from Harefield, St Mary's, and the Royal Brompton hospitals in a privately-financed complex in Paddington would cost more than double original estimates, it was revealed this week.

The project was supposed to cost £360million but the latest figure released by the Paddington project team is £800million.

The Paddington team have already been told revised plans will have to be re-submitted leading to more delays for the project which was initially scheduled for completion in 2008. It is now expected to open in 2011, if it gets planning permission.

A letter from Mr Graham King, head of planning at Westminster Council, to director of the Paddington project, Nigel Hodson, made it clear there was a large question mark over the size of the development.

The letter states: "The current proposal raises serious concerns that throw into question the suitability of the site for the scale of development being proposed.

"It would appear that, without the inclusion of adjacent land/buildings to the development site, the proposal would constitute an overdevelopment of the site and could thus be impossible to justify in planning terms."

This latest report could serve to put off potential finance partners crucial to the success of the scheme.

Meanwhile, local people, who have fought against the move, took their campaign to the Department of Health and Westminster last week to urge new health secretary John Reid to support them and lobby the House of Commons at the last Prime Minister's Question Time before the summer recess.

Ms Jean Brett, chairman of the Heart of Harefield campaign to keep the hospital open, said she was angered by Dr Reid's decision not to meet the group, which included Watford heart transplant patient Tom Harvey and his wife, Carole, and long-serving heart charity fundraiser Tony Potter.

But she said the latest developments in the Paddington project supported what she and other opponents had said about the high cost and feasibility of the scheme.

She said: "I am horrified that the original £360million projected cost of the Paddington project has rocketed to £800million.

"Yet three years after putting in the original planning application in 2000, not one brick can be laid because the project is 20 per cent short of space and does not even have outline planning permission.

"How much more public money is going to be wasted on this fiasco before the Government steps in to halt it?"