THE fight has begun to save yet another Cotswold service from the scrapheap.

Plans are now in motion to close Cirencester’s Minor Injuries Unit overnight. Earlier this week NHS bosses rushed to assure the public that this was not an “exercise in saving money”, though it wasn’t explained how dispensing with the overnight service would cost the tax payer more.

The fight, which adorns our front page this week, is the leg of a long journey, which saw doctors pulled from the unit at the end of last year, increasingly frequent overnight closures due to staffing pressures and finally, as we are seeing now, an admittance that the way the service is being run isn’t working.

The news comes soon after all full-time firefighters were taken out of Cirencester and amid heavy police budget cuts.

For many, it is not just losing the service, but losing the service when the Cotswolds’ population is set to rocket over the next 15 years, with unprecedented development in every major town.

When the full-time firefighters left the station, the Standard was told that all services were continually reviewed, and the crews could be reinstated if a population boom warranted it.

This may also ring true for the MIU.

But overnight closures may still never happen.

The community is rallying, and when it rallies in the Cotswolds, the authorities had better watch out.