A hospital trust is to spend £100,000 on improving cleanliness.

The South Downs Health NHS Trust, which runs Brighton General Hospital, has been given the money as part of a Government initiative to clean up NHS hospitals.

In a recent inspection the trust scored badly on cleanliness.

The worst areas were wards, visitors' toilets, entrances and link corridors. Brighton General's external decoration and signs were also singled out as problem areas.

Nearly a third of the money will be spent on establishing a fast Response Cleaning Team to tackle areas which are hard to clean and to respond quickly to emergencies such as an outbreak of the infection MRSA.

Patient Environment Action Teams have carried out two unannounced inspections of Brighton General since August.

The first visit showed the trust still had much to do to improve standards.

Many of the areas covered by the inspection team received a low grading.

Only the staff were given full marks. They were described as "making the best of a very difficult site to manage."

Among the criticisms were old and damaged furniture and "gloomy and depressing ward blocks".

Many wards were said to "smell of stale urine and residual food smells".

The biggest challenges to cleanliness at the hospital are a lack of cleaning staff and the fact the hospital is earmarked for demolition, which precludes making major improvements.

The trust's director of facilities, Bob Ellarby, who is in charge of tackling the problem, said: "We are looking quite closely at our performance in this area.

"It is hard to attract enough staff. Cleaners are among the lowest paid in the trust and we just do not have enough of them."

Trust chief executive Andrew Horne said: "The biggest reduction in cleaning staff took place in the late Eighties when there was a big exercise in competitive tendering.

"It was not just about getting private staff into hospitals but also about reducing the pay of existing staff.

"This trust fought it all the way and kept its own staff.

"Now I have to agree it has gone too far and we do need to readdress the balance.

"It could have been a lot worse if we had gone ahead with competitive tendering."