ANDOVER was alive with the tooting of horns last Monday morning as residents sounded their support for striking hospital staff.

Nurses, healthcare assistants, cleaners and porters picketed outside the town’s War Memorial Hospital in response to the Government’s decision not to give them a one per cent pay rise.

An independent pay review body had suggested that all NHS staff should receive a one per cent pay rise, but the Government has not followed their recommendation.

That prompted the first strike over pay for 32 years by NHS workers, while members of the Royal College of Midwives voted to join the picket lines for the first time in their 133- year history alongside colleagues from trade unions Unison, Unite and GMB.

Spearheading the protest in the town, Kate Henning lead steward for Unison at Andover War Memorial Hospital, said: “The emphasis is not about the trust it is about the Government and the one per cent pay rise which we negotiated and they rescinded.

“We really want to support the NHS staff because without them we would have a poor service. The Government needs to realise that.”

The strikes took place between 7am and 11am on M o n d a y morning but didn’t stop there, with staff workingto- rule for the rest of the week, completing only their contractual hours and taking their full lunch breaks.

Kim Nott, manager of the hospital’s minor injuries unit, said: “I am here because there are people like porters, cleaners and medical records staff who do not get the recognition they deserve.

You see pictures of doctors and nurses but you don’t see the people in the background who keep the service running.”

Patient service assistant Joyce Dempster felt so strongly about the pay rise that she joined Monday’s picket lines despite being on annual leave.

She said: “I am just fed up with not having a pay rise. I have worked in this hospital for 20 years and I have never done this before.”