The NHS Trust running Stafford Hospital spent £628,000 on boosting its image in a three-year-period when it was embroiled in a scandal over dismal standards of care.

Mid-Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust, which also runs Cannock Hospital, spent the cash on public relations and marketing over the last three financial years.

Over the same time period that Stafford Hospital is accused of causing between 400 and 1,200 avoidable deaths – partly due to poor staffing levels – its parent trust spent tens of thousands of pounds on a PR agency in addition to spending more than £30,000 a year on its own internal press office.

Spending on PR agencies ballooned from £51,000 in 2006/07 to £107,000 in 2008/09. Thousands more was spent on advertisements and “marketing management costs”.

The total PR spend is equal to the cost of around ten full-time nurses every year.

Julie Bailey, founder of campaign group Cure the NHS, called for the resignation of the hospital’s PR staff on the basis that the money has been wasted and the marketing campaigns have failed.

She said: “It is beyond absurd. They have been spending thousands of pounds on putting out spin at a time people have been dying around them.

“This is all money that could have been spent on staff at a time patients were dying because of a lack of beds and other basic needs.

“They have kept on putting out spin and the country has had to listen to it, but meanwhile more patients have suffered.”

Figures were uncovered by the Express & Star under Freedom of Information laws, but members of the PR team at the hospital were unavailable for comment this morning.

The “appalling” standards of care were highlighted in a Healthcare Commission report last March.

Since then a three-month independent inquiry into standards of care at the hospital has been chaired by Robert Francis QC.

His findings are due to be released shortly.