THE freeze on NHS cuts announced by the health secretary met a mixed response outside Chase Farm Hospital this morning.

Andrew Lansley spent two hours touring the hospital and explaining his new health plans to onlookers.

Speaking to a small crowd outside the A&E department, Mr Lansley said he was scrapping NHS London's "top-down" plans to cut Chase Farm services until a GP-led consultation was complete.

The original proposals, designed to save £5 billion a year by 2016, would have seen the closure of Chase Farm's 24-hour A&E department by 2014 and its consultant-led maternity and children's services by 2011.

However, Mr Lansley refused to guarantee the A&E department would be saved or say how long the moratorium on cuts would last.

Speaking after the health secretary's announcement, former Save Chase Farm councillor Kieran McGregror said: "We welcome the Secretary of State's rapid response to the electorate of Enfield's views, but it will take a while to assimilate all the information.

"We were looking for an unambiguous commitment that front line services would be saved and I'm not sure that is what we heard.

"We need further information and need to know the format of future talks."

Mr McGregor voiced fears the exercise would merely be a repeat of what had gone before.

"Clearly Enfield has already been through a very lengthy process of consultation after failed consultation, and the public has repeatedly made its views known.

"We will have to make sure we monitor this process to ensure it doesn't disintegrate into a box-ticking exercise with the same outcome."

Ivy Beard, a pensioner from Littlebrook Gardens, Cheshunt, was similarly equivocal about the health secretary's speech.

She said: "He referred to 'efficiencies', but in the past that has related to cutting services. I don't know yet whether that will be true in this case.

"He also talked about consultations, but we've had five years of consultations and 70,000 signatures.

"I'm also not sure how many clinitians will actually be prepared to be involved in these talks.

"I'm hopeful, but I'm not holding my breath."