MEDICAL staff still working at Bury General Hospital fear the Christmas spirit has passed them by.

Since the transfer of services from the Walmersley Road site to Fairfield General Hospital, staff still left at Bury General say they feel they have been "forgotten", and have not been invited to Christmas dinner.

But hospital bosses insist they are not playing Scrooge, and say they are at a loss to explain their employees' concerns.

The pathology team is still working at the site, along with some training staff.

An anonymous letter sent to the Bury Times this week and signed only "Forgotten Employees", said: "Bury General Hospital may have been boarded up, fences have been erected and vandals have left their mark but, believe it or not there are people still working there!

"We used to enjoy going to work; now it's like entering a detention centre." The letter said that the staff have no idea when they will be moving to the Rochdale Old Road complex.

"To demoralise us further, management are now completely closing our canteen and issuing us with a vending machine, and will not even allow us to buy our Christmas lunch which they could easily supply if they wanted to."

The letter concluded: "This is our way of reminding Bury NHS Trust that we are still working hard on their behalf, and not to forget us."

Philip Bacon, chief executive of Bury Health Care NHS Trust, said: "We are very appreciative of all our staff and there has been a misunderstanding.

"We do have Christmas dinner for all our employees and, of course, those who work at the Bury General site are invited. We have a few sittings of Christmas dinner to ensure everyone is invited."

Mr Bacon said that a new multi-million pound state-of-the-art education training centre was being established for the training staff but that there had been a few "transitional problems".

The transfer of remaining staff from Bury General to the Fairfield complex will be discussed this afternoon (Tuesday December 11) at a meeting of the Bury NHS Trust Board.