DORSET County Hospital has pulled up the carpeting in its clinical wards - at a cost approaching £200,000.

The hospital has been replacing the carpet with vinyl flooring in most of its wards in a bid to reduce germs and improve the appearance.

Head of estates Keith Butler said that by 2006 the Dorchester hospital would have spent £204,000 on replacement flooring, with a 'significant amount' of that figure paying for vinyl to be laid.

Mr Butler said the decision to carpet the hospital had been a controversial one when the hospital was built, but had reflected a move to make the buildings more welcoming and less institutional.

He said that the carpet was being replaced in an ongoing project in hospital wards but that replacement carpet was still being laid down in corridors.

Hospital director of nursing and infection prevention and control Alison Tong said that the carpets were difficult to clean and collected stains and odours, which made them seem dirty even when they had recently been cleaned.

Mrs Tong said: "When the hospital was built it was felt at the time that carpets were a better floor covering, mainly because of the quietness you have.

"At the time they were put in, in the 1990s, there was a new breed of carpet produced that was felt to be easier to clean and resistant to a lot of stains. It was thought to be better for patients to use as they were said to be less likely to fall, but the promises, certainly for the cleaning prospects, didn't bear out."

Mrs Tong said funding for the project, which began in 2003, had come from money earmarked for building maintenance and could not have been spent on other areas of healthcare.

She added: "The practicalities are that if anything gets spilt on them it's not easy to remove it. They don't clean very easily and they don't always look that nice - they do absorb smells as well.

"It gives the impression that they are dirty when they are not."

She said that dust and dirt was more easily spotted on vinyl flooring and easier to remove.