HEALTH watchdogs want to know how Bucks Mental Health Trust will provide transport, ensure public safety and recruit enough staff, under its proposals for the future of the service.

Buckinghamshire health scrutiny committee, a body of district and county councillors, is charged with examining the trust's plans, as it did with those for changes at Wycombe and Stoke Mandeville hospitals.

The mental health trust is proposing fewer inpatient beds for adults and a new hospital in Aylesbury, replacing the Tindal Hospital at Aylesbury and the Haleacre Unit at Amersham. There will also be changes for older patients, but no fewer beds.

More teams will treat more people in the community, using money saved in the hospital reorganisation.

Mike Appleyard, chairman of the scrutiny committee said patients, their families and their carers needed access to assessment and to hospitals.

"We want the county and district councils and the mental health trust to get together to coordinate transport," he said.

He said with more people being treated in the community rather than in hospital people might be worried about the risks involved. He understood that risks were extremely small, but his members wanted figures.

Finally he said the committee wanted to know if the trust would be able to recruit the staff needed to run the extra community teams, especially in expensive areas in the south of the county.