Hundreds of local people fighting to save crucial Stafford Hospital services facing the axe will confront care commissioners tonight over their collaboration in the closure of child and maternity care.

Protesters spent their 60th night under canvas yesterday in a 40-tent encampment in the grounds of the cuts-threatened site (pictured).

Today their numbers will swell by hundreds more as they unfurl a massive banner sending a defiant message to Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) members who hold the purse strings to the town’s healthcare.