£20m cost of Staffordshire NHS trust overhaul labelled 'apalling' by campaigners

It was revealed yesterday that almost £20 million was spent on the administration process, which was millions more than was first predicted.

Health regulator Monitor, who appointed the administrators, originally budgeted £15.25m for the work but the timescale had to be extended twice.

Karen Howell, a founding member of the Support Stafford Hospital group who is standing in the general elections in May, said: "The cost of the administration process in itself is really appalling.

"A lot of money has not gone directly on patient care. My view is why could this money not have been spent on patient care or on recruiting staff."

The administration process, led by Alan Bloom, Alan Hudson, and Dr Hugo Mascie-Taylor, ended in November and has seen a downgrade of Stafford's A&E, maternity and children's departments.

The hospital is now run by the new University Hospitals of North Midlands NHS Trust after a merger with the University Hospital of North Staffordshire Trust.

The total cost was £19.5m.

That figure covered work to find and implement a solution to the problems at the trust ­- £17.35m - and £2.15m was paid to the administrators to run County Hospital in Stafford and Royal Stoke University Hospital.

During the course of special administration, Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust paid Ernst & Young, the team supporting the TSAs, for additional professional services work costing £3.55 million.

Mrs Howell added: "Businesses are put into administration not hospitals.

"Ernst & Young make a profit on stuff like this. This money is not going back into the NHS."

Bosses at Monitor defended the rising cost of the administration process saying Mid Staffs was failing its patients and relying on tens of millions of pounds of emergency funding from central government each year adding if nothing had been done the trust would have been £100m in debt by 2018.

Monitor plans to publish a detailed breakdown of the costs, alongside a report setting out some of the lessons learned, in due course.

It emerged last week that the TSAs claimed expenses of more than £1,000-a-day in the time they were in charge of the health trust.