HOSPITAL staff have been told to empty their own bins after cash-strapped NHS bosses slashed cleaners' hours by 25 per cent.

Office workers at Pendle and Rossendale community hospitals will have to take out their own rubbish because there won't be enough cleaners, it has been revealed.

Rooms will instead be cleaned by the domestic staff once a fortnight.

The number of hours domestic staff spend on wards at the community hospitals is to be axed, from 853 hours a week to 626.

A member of the cleaning staff today warned the changes would put massive pressure on cleaners - and would raise the risk of deadly infections such as MRSA.

But an NHS manager said fewer people were needed because services had been axed at the two sites - moves driven in part by the need to save cash.

A spokesman for East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust said: "Office staff, whose bins don't usually fill up everyday, have been asked to empty their bins into a plastic bag and leave it on the corridor at the end of the day where it will be picked up by a member of domestic staff.

"Offices will receive a full clean, including bin emptying, fortnightly."

The reduction in cleaning hours has come about because six cleaners are to be sent to fill empty posts at East Lancashire's two general hospitals in Burnley and Blackburn.

This will make their old jobs obsolete so cash-strapped Trust bosses can save on salary payments.

Today one of the cleaning staff said the move would hit cleanliness standards.

They said: "It will be disgusting. It will be impossible to clean the ward properly.

"At the moment we will have three hours to clean one area well. Now we will have three hours to do that and the whole of the floor and the stairs and corridor. We just won't have the time to do it."

They went on: "I wouldn't be surprised if anybody got MRSA. I wouldn't like to stay there as a patient."

John Amos, vice chairman of the Patient and Public Involvement Forum watchdog which oversees the Trust, said: "To make office workers clean out their own bins is the ultimate in pettiness.

"Staff won't like doing it and many will forget to.

"It is wrong that they are trying to cut corners on cleaning with MRSA and other hospital acquired infection rates being such a high priority."

Gerry Newsham, of the Friends of Pendle Community Hospital charity, said: "This is pretty savage and will be detrimental to the hospital.

"Everyone keeps talking about diseases and infections in hospitals and if they are cutting down on cleaning it speaks for itself. Cleanliness is utmost and this does not help."

Sue Chapman, head of hotel services at the Trust, said fewer cleaners were required at Rossendale and Pendle because of a reduction in service at the two hospitals.

She added: "We are confident that we will continue to be able to deliver a high quality of cleanliness at both these sites."