WHEN he stepped down as chairman of York Hospital in 2010, health economist Professor Alan Maynard fired a parting shot across the NHS’ bows.

Many doctors earned huge sums of money, he said. Even nurses by and large did reasonably well. And yet many NHS ancillary workers were earning little more than the minimum wage.

You couldn’t run a health service without doctors and nurses, he conceded. “But it cannot work without cleaners, without porters, either.”

Seven years on, hospital bosses in York would do well to heed those words. The hospital has the equivalent of 24 full-time vacancies for ‘domestic positions’. One member of cleaning staff claims areas of the hospital are filthy as a result.

The Unite union says cleaning staff are under huge pressure because of hard-to-meet cleaning targets, and claims there have been allegations of bullying by managers. The hospital denies this, insists agency cleaners are keeping the hospital clean, and says permanent cleaners are being recruited.

What is also true, however, is that new cleaning staff will be required to pay for their DBS security checks - required for anyone working with or near vulnerable people - out of their own pockets.

These checks can cost between £26 and £44, which may not seem a lot. But cleaning staff at York Hospital earn £7.90 an hour - just 40p above the new National Minimum Wage.

In the circumstances, requiring them to pay for their own checks seems mean in the extreme, and says little for the regard in which vital cleaning staff are held by the hospital’s well-paid bosses.