PATIENTS and leading politicians have hit out health bosses over the latest medical records blunder.

Personal information relating to 3,200 patients was been dumped at a landfill site instead of being burned or shredded.

It is the third time medical data has been lost in Bolton in just four months.

Details of 300 seriously ill patients who received house calls from the out-of-hours service in December and January were included in the records sent to a landfill site.

Almost 3,000 other records of people being treated by the anti-coagulant service were also dumped incorrectly.

One patient said: "I received a letter from Bolton Primary Care Trust telling me some paper copies of health information was in their words occasionally being disposed of along with general rubbish' at their Waters Meeting Road anti-coagulation service.

"This is totally unacceptable and this information may be used by someone who might want to create fraudulent identities."

The error was spotted by a manager at the centre who realised the confidential records were being disposed of, even though the system had not yet been put in place to get rid of them securely by burning or shredding them.

Managers at the Primary Care Trust have written to all patients, telling them about the error.

All staff have also been urged to make sure they use extra care when disposing of patient details.

Leading politicians in Bolton are calling for staff to make sure nothing like this is allowed to happen again.

Dr Brian Iddon, MP for Bolton South-east, said: "I implore staff working with confidential records such as those kept by the NHS to be far more careful, particularly in storing, removing and disposing of them."

Chairman of Bolton Council's health scrutiny committee, Cllr Andy Morgan, added: "Identity fraud is on the increase and to say sorry is simply not good enough. Continued breaches of data protection of this sort do nothing to instil confidence in the NHS and other government bodies protecting our personal information.

"If a private company continued to have breaches of this significance then I am sure they would have been prosecuted by now under the provisions of the Data Protection Act."

In October a computer containing the personal details of 200 gynaecology cancer patients was stolen from an office in the Royal Bolton Hospital.

Thieves struck again at the hospital in December when a computer with the details of 350 chest patients was stolen.