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.