OLIVER EVANS reports from the annual meeting of The League of Friends of the Kidderminster Hospitals.

SUPPORTERS of Kidderminster Hospital have hit out at health chiefs who are looking to move a volunteer-run coffee shop to "totally unsuitable" new premises.

A mooted new site for the coffee shop, to be run by The League of Friends of the Kidderminster Hospitals, would see volunteers having to pass through a medical area and serving food through a "hatch", the group's chairman said.

In what is the second major complaint about the design of the building, opened in February, Friends' chairman David Wase said health chiefs had been asked to come back with a better plan for the new shop, on the first floor of the Treatment Centre building.

He said: "We would have to serve through a little hole and would have to go through the back door with dirty crockery and deliveries through a corridor where patients are waiting, which I don't think is on.

"We feel, at the moment, we wouldn't be able to move into that room and serve through that tiny hatch because people can't see what we are selling."

The Friends' coffee shop, presently located between the Treatment Centre and the X-ray department, would move to the new "Terrace Caf", on the outpatients floor, as part of the transfer of services to the £19 million facility.

Volunteer Win Aldred said she too was not impressed with what had been offered. She told the Shuttle/Times & News: "We are very concerned because we are struggling to get a proper facility.

"(The first floor site) is totally inadequate. It is just not serviceable as a coffee shop. It would affect our income if we moved in there but it is not just the money, it is a place for people to have a cup of tea or coffee and a kind word."

The Friends put in its plan to Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust, which runs the Bewdley Road hospital, involving demolition work to provide a servery at the proposed shop site.

Trust spokesman Richard Haynes said discussions were on-going with the friends over the move. He said the plan put in by the Friends raised fire safety issues which would have to be resolved.

"It would be for us,the Friends and the designers to come up with a solution which everybody is happy with," Mr Haynes added.

In February, anaesthetist Dr Richard Herbert, who has worked at Kidderminster Hospital for more than 30 years, told the Shuttle/Times and News the Treatment Centre's operating facilities were "totally inadequate".