THREE beds are to be cut as part of a ward restructuring programme at the Friarage Hospital, Northallerton.

Bosses at South Tees Hospitals NHS Trust, which runs the Friarage, are about to change the way medicine and orthopaedic wards operate.

The beds will be lost when the four existing medical wards will be merged to form three wards.

Director of operational services Neil Permain said the move would allow the hospital to have three wards fully staffed by nurses, instead of four under-staffed wards.

"The four medical wards we have are too small to make the best use of our nursing resources," he said.

"Following the move we will be able to maintain these levels of staffed beds much more often than we have been recently.

"We will have more beds per ward and this makes better use of available staff. Running these wards efficiently means there will be no reduction in the numbers of patients we can admit or the standard of care offered."

In orthopaedics, the trust is changing the way that the two wards are run. Instead of both taking the same type of patients, one will admit mainly patients who have shorter stay planned operations and the other will take emergency patients who need to be in hospital for a longer time. The first ward will be closed at weekends.

Mr Permain said: "Again it makes sense to have staff working at times when there is most need and this move makes the best use of the staff and facilities available.

"Staff in these wards have been consulted throughout this process. In fact staff were instrumental in this because they made suggestions about how the wards could be run more safely and efficiently in the interests of patients and staff."