Mayday named clean and dirty

1:39pm Wednesday 18th April 2001

Mayday Hospital has been labelled dirty' by health watchdogs but clean by Government inspectors.

Croydon Community Health Council slammed cleanliness at Mayday, days before a hygiene report for the Department of Health put the London Road hospital in the top 13 per cent in a national survey.

At a recent meeting of Croydon Community Health Council (CCHC), in the presence of Mayday's deputy chief executive, Frank McGurrin, Mayday working group member Malcolm Selberg slammed the hospital after seeing dirt during a spot check on wards in January and February.

Mr Selberg said: �I would expect a hospital to be cleaner than my home. What I saw was dirt.�

But Mr McGurrin responded by saying Mr Selberg's comments were unfair and that the cleaning contract had since been revised.

This week, Mayday chief executive, Keith Ford, welcomed the Department of Health report, which marked the hospital as excellent following two spot checks in autumn and this year.He said it was broader than suggested because it measured tidiness, food quality, signage and the hospital grounds, as well as cleanliness.

He told the Guardian: �That is not to say we aren't pleased about the overall findings, we are very pleased to be graded green. But I would not want to be complacent in 19 acres of Mayday site there are bound to be areas which still need some work.�

Chief officer for CCHC, Peter Walsh, believes the difference in findings between the CHC and the Department of Health echoed a similar divergence over casualty waiting times.

He said CCHC's reality checks' independent and from patients' point of view put more pressure on the health service to improve.

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