Stroke patients are no longer being treated at Stafford Hospital because too many were dying, councillors have been told. Instead they are now being transferred.

Patients will be treated at Wolverhampton’s New Cross Hospital or to the University Hospital of North Staffordshire in Stoke-on-Trent instead.

Members of Stafford Borough Council’s health scrutiny committee heard death rates for stroke patients at the Weston Road hospital were twice the European average.

Stafford Hospital took almost 40 per cent of all stroke patients in South Staffordshire, which was approximately 380 people a year.

But the hospital does not meet national stroke standards because it has no dedicated stroke unit and cannot provide specific stroke treatments such as brain scans quickly enough.

As a result more stroke patients died. Mortality rates of all stroke patients were at 32 per cent compared with a European average of just 15 per cent.

The death rates has meant a deal has now been done to send stroke victims elsewhere from June this year. Health committee chairman Councillor Philip Jones described the changes as “fundamental”.