SOME long-term residential patients at Savernake Hospital have had to be found new accommodation because of unprecedented levels of staff sickness.

The Kennet and North Wiltshire NHS Primary Care Trust said the need to relocate patients from the Marlborough Hospital has nothing to do with the new hospital on which work starts after Christmas.

Patients at the Ailesbury men's and women's geriatric wards were told recently that they would be transferred to a ward at Devizes Hospital for the one-year duration of construction work at Marlborough.

A trust spokeswoman said that as a result of unforeseen sickness one ward at Savernake had to close temporarily.

Five patients who were waiting for home care placement were transferred to interim placements.

Phil Day, director of community services at the PCT, said: "We had to ask some patients who were waiting to leave the hospital to transfer to care homes at short notice."

One member of the Savernake nursing staff who asked not to be named, said some of the elderly patients were upset at being moved so close to Christmas.

She claimed that nurses were falling ill because of what she called "intolerable levels of stress" they faced over the impending decant of the two geriatric wards from Savernake to Devizes and the prospect of commuting by bus until the new hospital opens in spring 2005.

She said: "No-one is happy with what has been happening at Savernake.

"At least two nurses are suffering with long-term stress illnesses and that has added to the stress for all the others."