Votes taken before councillors left a key health meeting should stand, health campaigners have argued.

It comes after members of the Cumbria Health Scrutiny Committee originally agreed to refer controversial local NHS changes to the Secretary of State, but later backtracked.

Now the We Need West Cumberland Hospital campaign group has written to Katherine Fairclough, chief executive of Cumbria County Council, setting out serious concerns and calling for the original vote to stand. If not, campaigners say they will seek legal advice.

The letter, signed by Annette Robson on behalf of the group, states: "We are writing to register how unhappy we are at the way the scrutiny committee meeting was conducted, and to demand the vote taken earlier in the day - that paediatrics should be referred to the Secretary of State - should be the one that stands given that is when the full complement of councillors were present.

"Given the importance of the decisions being taken at this meeting we think it is a scandal that the councillors taking part in the meeting weren’t given sufficient guidance throughout the process.

"The day ended in chaos with three councillors leaving, believing their part had been played and they were not eligible to vote in the next part of the meeting. A fourth councillor left citing distance of travel, weather conditions and family matters. If they had been present and voted it is clear the result regarding paediatrics would have been very different to the one taken at the end of the meeting."

She adds that, as the maternity and paediatrics service are so closely linked, it makes no sense to refer one of the decisions to health secretary Jeremy Hunt without the other.

"The decisions taken on Wednesday are a matter of life and death for the people of west Cumbria. We are shocked that the future of our health care has been handled and determined in such a shoddy and chaotic manner and we demand an investigation into the events of the day."