Over the next few months, an options assessment panel with an independent chairman will decide on the implementation of changes which must be "clinically and financially sustainable".

Have all our arguments and efforts been enough to get a good result for Worthing and Southlands' future hospital services?

Let's look at what's happened over the past 18 months.

The PCT's Fit for the Future proposal provided a bombshell package of three options, two of which seriously downgrade our local services, including losing A&E facilities.

Fit for the Future provoked a storm of outrage from all sections of the community, the like of which I had never before witnessed in all my years on the Worthing news scene.

It unleashed a spirit of co-operation in a common cause which, surely, had not been experienced since the war years – a feeling brought to mind at last weekend's Remembrance ceremonies.

I was also heartened to see that, although the PCT proposals seemed to make it a two-horse race for A&E facilities between Worthing and St Richard's (Chichester) hospitals, there was no resulting "them or us" mentality between the two hospital areas.

Everyone has been working towards a right and patient-protecting result, and the Worthing Herald has been uniquely placed to reflect all of this.

I remember that back in the early 1960s, Dr Beeching's Plan decided either the giant railway carriage works at Lancing or at Eastleigh would have to go.

It soon became a war of words between the two workforces, and Lancing's 1,500 employees lost the battle.

Many thought that this decision was made on political, rather than economic grounds.

Thankfully, we have seen none of the self-serving acrimony which was a potential by-product posed by Fit for the Future.

Both hospital communities, led by their local clinicians, civic leaders and MPs, have worked together to expose the fundamental flaws of the PCT package.

The whole experience has been a memorable exercise in how people can work together, and I hope it is a lesson which won't be forgotten in many other spheres in the way we are governed.

There is now a glimmer of hope that A&E services may be retained at all three hospitals in West Sussex, but this is no time to sit back on the laurels of a battle well fought.

Churchill said after the World War II turning point of El Alamein: "Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end.
"But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."

Bearing in mind the great man's salutary caution, we should remember that the people of West Sussex still have a great health battle to win.