Staff are being axed at Wolverhampton’s Compton Hospice which has just been given a £3.5million facelift, the Express & Star can reveal today.

Up to nine ‘ward hostesses’ who serve patients their meals will lose their jobs as part of a restructure, with nurses set to take on feeding duties.

Chief executive Ron Middleton said the move would save £50,000 a year, a fraction of the hospice’s annual expenditure of £6.2m providing specialist care to people with a terminal illness in Staffordshire and the Black Country.

And he revealed a staffing review had started even before work on the hospice’s year-long, seven-figure redevelopment got under way. The hospice, in Compton Road West, employs 200 people.

As part of the revamp 18 single, en-suite patient rooms have been installed, replacing wards of up to four beds, and the new arrangements require a “new approach”, Mr Middleton said.

“We realised even before the building work started that the changes in facilities and in particular the new configuration of the in-patient unit would require a major rethink of how services would be delivered in the new environment,” Mr Middleton said.

To read our stories in full, log in to the premium 24 website.