WOMEN could suffer a reduction in healthcare services after mindless vandals repeatedly trashed a mobile breast-screening unit.

The new £70,000 trailer was introduced last September and has been helping women to detect cancer since.

Now the life-saving service may be withdrawn from Beaconsfield after youths repeatedly damaged the 11ft trailer.

The mobile unit was based at the Beacon Centre, Holtspur, Beaconsfield, which was only the second place the service had visited.

But the thoughtless yobs caused £300 damage, tampering with an electricity supply box and ruining an emergency exit.

The service was scheduled to visit 14 different locations in South Bucks and was due to be back in Holtspur in 2003. South Bucks NHS Trust may now remove Holtspur from the scheme leaving the 50- to 64-year-old women who are offered screening every three years with further to travel.

Tory Beaconsfield MP Dominic Grieve said: "I can sympathise with their point of view that having laid on the service to have it vandalised is an extremely regrettable matter. I hope on reconsidering the matter the NHS Trust will feel they ought to maintain the service at Holtspur.

"There is quite a lot of vandalism in Holtspur but it is by no means the worse place they have to visit. The victims shouldn't be the women of Holtspur who rely on the service."

South Bucks District Councillor and Beaconsfield Town Councillor Bill Bridger, said: "The NHS Trust spends millions - to withdraw a facility for a loss of £300, that seems to be a drop in the bucket. The problem is we just haven't got an adequate police presence."

Dr Margaret Payne, co-ordinator of the service, said: "It is extremely frustrating and disappointing to see a brand new service attacked in this way. We do suffer from petty vandalism from time to time, but nothing to compare with the continual attacks endured in Holtspur.

" People should be aware that if this service is not respected women from the Beaconsfield area may have to travel to Wycombe Hospital for screening which would obviously be much less convenient for many of them."