A GP chief has said half of services provided by hospitals should be farmed out, because of a need to “downsize”.

Dr Michael Dixon, interim president of NHS Clinical Commissioners, which represents a group of clinical commissioning groups (CCG) including Kingston’s, made the comment in an interview with the Guardian newspaper.

Clinical commissioning groups hold the purse strings for £65bn of NHS funding nationally.

But Dr Naz Jivani, chairman of Kingston CCG, said there were no plans on that scale in the borough.

He said: “There are no plans locally for hospitals to lose 50 per cent of their services, but we have been working for some time with colleagues across south-west London to look at hospital services, and how we can improve services for patients as well as providing them more effectively.”

He said a rise in population was one of the pressures weighing on health services, and the CCG needs to make sure provision is sustainable over long periods of time.

He added: "We already have examples of this working successfully for our diabetes, neurology and urology patients."

A Kingston Hospital spokeswoman said it had been “working closely” with the CCG and health providers to discuss moving services to the community.

She said: “Kingston Hospital already provides some of its services in the community and in conjunction with Kingston Clinical Commissioning Group we will be extending this with more outpatient clinics moving to Surbiton Hospital and the new Raynes Park Health Centre.”

She added the hospital was playing an active role in the Better Services Better Value (BSBV) review, which aims to provide fewer acute hospital services, in favour of primary and community care.

The review, which will decide after a consultation this year which of Kingston, Croydon, Epsom, St Helier, and St George’s hospitals will lose frontline maternity and accident and emergency services, has come increasingly under attack.

A group of MPs including Justice Secretary Chris Grayling has called BSBV “a flawed process, based on contested assumptions and poor data”.