ONLY five years after building a £250,000 medical records library at Bishop Auckland General Hospital, the NHS Trust had it bulldozed and built over, it has been revealed.

The same hospital trust - County Durham and Darlington Acute Hospitals NHS Trust - is now paying what is believed to be more than £100,000 a year to taxi records between Bishop Auckland, Darlington Memorial Hospital and a new records library in a former factory on the edge of Darlington.

The situation was revealed by members of the Unison health union during an interview due to be published by Health Emergency magazine.

John Lister, director of information for Health Emergency, recently interviewed workers at Bishop Auckland as part of a wide-ranging article about the private finance initiative (PFI).

A spokeswoman for Bishop Auckland General Hospital said: "The new medical records site was set up because the trust wanted to centralise medical records for Bishop Auckland and Darlington hospitals. It is more efficient to have all the records on one site.

"When the planners were looking at a site for the new hospital, the demolition of the medical records library appeared to be the most cost-effective solution."

Another areas of deep concern among employees are the level of cleanliness and shortages of equipment.