STAFF at the Royal Bolton Hospital may have to pay for car parking so that the hospital can raise up to £100,000 a year.

Bosses at the hospital have said that if staff do not start to pay, clinical services for the general public will be affected.

At a hospital Trust board meeting yesterday it was agreed that charging staff for parking was the only step forward to stopping further financial crises in the future, without cutting clinical services, such as temporary nurses.

At present, staff park for free but the building of a multi-storey car park in two years time would have meant staff having to pay. But, because of tight finances, the introduction of staff paying is likely to be brought forward because it would make the hospital between £75,000 and £100,000 every year.

Acting chief executive Joanna Wallace said: "We have go to identify savings and the board understands that we are committed to developing a financial programme and we cannot write this off. We have to think of ways of generating money and if we dismiss this, we have to think of other, less palliative, savings."

Director of Nursing Lesley Doherty said: "It is this or stopping clinical services and we have got to be pragmatic."

The board agreed that more information was needed - how much staff would pay and where they would park - before the idea could be moved forward.