A health trust has dropped plans to charge patients staying overnight at hospital accommodation used by South Cumbrians.

Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has shelved plans to introduce a £25-a-night fee to stay at Bowland House at the Royal Preston Hospital.

Patients who use the facility typically include parents of neonatal babies; people receiving cancer treatments and those with relatives at the end of life.

The decision comes after MP for Westmorland and Lonsdale Tim Farron criticised the plans and labelled the fee a ‘tax on ill health’.

A Lancashire Teaching Hospitals spokesperson said: “Bowland House is a facility that we are not funded for but we want to continue to offer this as an option. We need to find a sustainable way of doing this and felt that we had achieved a reasonable compromise by asking the Trust, our Charitable Funds and those who use it to make a contribution towards the running costs.

“However, our own clinicians and management teams have raised concerns about unintended consequences such as increased admissions, as well as concerns about patient experience and inequalities which have also been reflected back to us by other stakeholders.

“We have taken this on board, and we are considering alternative options, with our Charity Committee having agreed to consider whether they can make an increased contribution.

“No patient has been charged for their stay to date and those with future bookings have been advised that they will not need to pay.”

Mr Farron said: “I’m delighted that health bosses have decided to bin these awful plans which would have been a tax on ill health.

“The fact that they had originally decided to go ahead with charging for overnight stays does highlight the severe financial strains that have been put on our local health services.”

According to Lancashire Teaching Hospitals there are currently 12 rooms available to patients and families at Bowland House and it is uncommon for NHS Trusts to offer this type, or volume, of on-site accommodation.

In a letter to the trust Mr Farron previously said: “It is bad enough that my constituents are forced to travel long distances to access cancer services at present, without having the added worry of how they can afford to stay over if they are not physically well enough to return home daily and feels like a tax on ill health, when people are possibly at their most vulnerable in their lives.”