Council bosses are offering a £100,000 contract for a firm to supply five beds to ease winter pressure at the county’s hospitals.

Shropshire Council has advertised the contract on its website, saying it wants to use the beds to help keep patients out of hospital during the busy winter months or to help with discharging.

The contract offer says: “Shropshire Council is interested in acquiring up to five block-purchased recovery nursing beds in Shrewsbury, to support hospital admission avoidance and hospital discharge.  

“The contract will be for a term of approximately five months from the commencement date (the date on which the first bed becomes occupied).

“Commencement date is expected to be November 1, 2019.”

Last December, bed occupancy rates at Shropshire’s hospitals soared above recommended safe levels, NHS figures showed.

Statistics showed that Shrewsbury & Telford Hospital NHS Trust (SaTH) exceeded its target for safe levels of bed occupancy in 26 out of 28 days in December 2018.

Levels reached an average of 90.7 per cent, exceeding the recommended 85 per cent to maintain patient safety standards.

On December 9, the county’s hospitals were close to capacity as the bed occupancy rate reached 95.4 per cent.

It was around 80 per cent for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

It was also announced in March that a new £3 million ward with 28 beds designed to help ease winter pressure at Royal Shrewsbury Hospital had not been fully opened because it did not meet building and fire regulations.

And by mid January 2019 a mobile unit had been put in place to help ease demand.

The unit, supplied by Vanguard Healthcare, was a fully-equipped mobile recovery unit and a walkway was constructed from it to the entrance of the treatment centre at the RSH.

At the time, Neil Rogers, interim assistant chief operating officer for Scheduled Care at SaTH, said: “This is the most pressurised time the year.

“The past two months have already seen spikes in emergency attendances and a higher volume of patients brought in by ambulance compared to last winter.”

Applications need to be made to Shropshire Council by September 30.