ALMOST £30,000 has been spent on accommodation and venue hire in the county since 2010 by Wye Valley Trust.

The total expenditure by the Trust on accommodation and venue hire for county premises totalled £27,692 since the 2010/2011 financial year to date.

Favourite for accommodation was Charades Guest House, located close to the County Hospital on Southbank Road in Hereford, where £16,184.64 has been spent in the same time period.

But Howard Oddy, director of finance and information at Wye Valley Trust said accommodation is necessary for good practise.

He said: “To enable the Trust to continue to provide patients with high quality care in our hospitals by qualified members of staff, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, we sometimes need to provide accommodation for locum or on call clinical and medical staff.

“In line with other hospitals across the country, and Trust policy, the requirement and approval of staff accommodation is based on clinical/medical staffing need, cost and availability of accommodation. Depending on the circumstances we pay between 25 and 100 per cent of the accommodation cost.

“The Trust spent a total of £10,600 on local hotel accommodation in 2012-13. This primarily reflected the provision of overnight accommodation for essential staff to ensure the Trust was able to maintain services during the severe weather and travelling conditions.

“On occasion the Trust also requires the hire of a meeting room to hold public meetings including the annual public meeting and public board meetings.

Of the total figure, £21,876 was spent on accommodation while £5,815 was spent on venue hire at premises across the county.

That included venues in Leominster, Hereford, Ledbury and Ross-on-Wye.