A PATIENT'S relative interviewed for a television expos of the acute hospital serving Wyre Forest has slammed its standards of design and cleanliness.

John Gordon, whose wife's aunt spent 20 weeks in Worcestershire Royal Hospital last year, featured in the BBC's Kenyon Confronts documentary screened last week in which undercover reporters claimed they found unacceptable hygiene levels.

A spokesman for Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust derided programme as "largely nonsense" and said it was "distorted and unbalanced".

But Mr Gordon told the Shuttle/Times & News the design of the £112 million Worcester hospital which opened 18 months ago was "all wrong".

He claimed individual rooms on wards meant delays if two nurses were needed to help a patient because when one member of staff was alerted by a patient's buzzer they had to go into various rooms to look for a colleague.

Mr Gordon, of Manor Road, Stourport - who is also a Worcestershire county councillor - said staff had told him far more patients were falling while trying to get out of bed on their own than at the old Ronkswood site.

"It has got privacy but it makes nursing a lot more hazardous," he said.

Mr Gordon added there was a "severe problem" with blocked drains which meant patients were sometimes unable to have baths and showers and he pointed to corridors which were too narrow for two trolleys to pass.

"It's an American-designed hospital just plonked in Worcester," he said.

Mr Gordon also said he saw soiled clothes and excrement under the bed.

But he stressed: "The care that the nurses gave I won't fault. The cleanliness is a management problem."

Trust spokesman Richard Haynes said the hospital was "designed with the input of clinical staff at every stage".

He added there was no official record of Mr Gordon making a complaint and advised people to approach the trust first with problems instead of the media.

"If patients or visitors or anybody in the community we serve have got any concerns we would urge them to contact us so that these complaints can be properly looked into."

New trust chief executive John Rostill has now invited Mr Gordon to the hospitals to discuss the issues raised.

Wyre Forest MP Dr Richard Taylor said there were "well known" problems with the building but added a change in the trust's senior management - including the arrival of Mr Rostill last month - meant difficulties were no longer glossed over.

"Their attitude to me is already completely different - now they're falling over backwards to tell me things," he said.