The Health Secretary, Alan Johnson, has announced that he is accepting proposals for a “reconfiguration” of emergency healthcare in South East London.

Following the publication of contested proposals titled “A Picture of Health”, the Independent Reconfiguration Panel were asked to look into the matter and have now recommended that the 24-hour Accident and Emergency unit at Queen Mary’s Hospital in Sidcup close in two years.

Emergency services will instead be concentrated on Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Woolwich, Princess Royal University Hospital and University Hospital Lewisham.

An e-Petition on the Downing Street website calling for the A&E unit to be saved garnered over 5,000 supporters, and a Facebook group called “Save our Services at Queen Mary’s Hospital” has over 2,000 members.

The author of a new book about Greenwich Park has criticised plans to hold the Olympic equestrian events in there at the 2012 games. Professor Anthony Quiney, who has lived locally for over 40 years, said of the plans:

If the government can be believed, and all things being equal, the Park should be ideal. But they are not equal. We now have NOGOE’s Report and Economic Assessment, which make it clear that the Olympics are trying to fit a quart into a pint pot. How are the Park’s Roman and medieval archaeology, its precious flora and fauna, its noble seventeenth-century trees, its amazing variety to be preserved, and the general disturbance made acceptable? LOCOG must either prove that this report is a dodgy dossier, or think again and take the events elsewhere. We cannot afford another dismal, half-baked fiasco like the Millennium Dome. Greenwich Park is far too precious for that

Quiney was formely Professor of Architectural History at the University of Greenwich, as well as President of the Royal Archaelogical Institute. His new book, A Year In The Life of Greenwich Park, is out now.