THOUSANDS of pests including cockroaches, maggots and rats have been found in maternity wards, children’s intensive care units and operating theatres in NHS hospitals over the last five years as cuts to services bite.

Data obtained under an FoI request revealed yesterday that there were 4,885 pest-control callouts to hospitals in England in the year to March 2016, up from 3,880 callouts in 2015-16.

The figures show that NHS trusts forked out more than £1 million on pest control in 2015-16 but the overall figure is likely to be far higher as less than two thirds of trusts had responded so far.

The majority of trusts outsourced their pest-control to profit-hungry private contractors such as Rentokil, ISS Facility Services and Medirest and paid for regular inspections as well as ad hoc callouts to pest sightings.

University Hospitals of Leicester (UHL) NHS Trust and Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trust each recorded more than 300 incidents in 2015/16.

Pest sightings at UHL, which runs Leicester General, Leicester Royal Infirmary and Glenfield hospitals and treats more than one million patients each year, more than trebled from 104 in 2011/12 to 337 in 2015/16.

Instances included cockroaches found in the specialist medicine admissions unit and elderly patient wards, rodents spotted in the maternity ward and insects sighted in operating theatres at Leicester General.

A Department of Health spokesman said: “Hospitals must have an effective pest control policy and the use of experts is good practice to ensure that buildings are kept clean and safe for patients.”