24 October 2003
A £100m privately financed hospital which opened last December is inaccessible and too small, Unison claimed in a report this week.
It said the Great Western Hospital in Swindon also suffered bed shortages, spiralling costs, bad food and serious design faults such as L-shaped wards, which led to poor visibility from the nurses' station.
Unison general secretary Dave Prentis said: 'Not only is the Private Finance Initiative failing to deliver value for money, it's failing to deliver improvements in patient care and it's certainly failing staff.'
The Department of Health acknowledged the hospital had problems but insisted parts of the report were factually incorrect.
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