The trust responsible for Royal Bolton spends hundreds of thousands of pounds a year on translation services as it strives to be 'accessible for all'.

Data from the TaxPayers' Alliance shows Bolton NHS Foundation Trust spent over £800,000 on the services in the three years up to March 2022.

The total of £804,702 comes to an average £268,234 a year, and covers the costs of translation in more than 60 tongues from Eastern European languages such as Polish and Romanian to Western African languages such as Wolof and Yoruba.

It is a little higher than the average of £241,984 a year amongst the NHS trusts to respond to the TaxPayers' Alliance, but a lot lower than the expenditure of other NHS trusts such as Barts Health NHS Trust (£1,844,464 a year) in the capital.

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However, it is important to remember the relative size of these trusts.

James Mawrey, the Director of People at Bolton NHS Foundation Trust, said: "We serve a diverse range of communities across Bolton and we need to ensure care is accessible for all.

"In healthcare, communicating in a way that people understand helps us to provide high levels of patient care while also minimising the risk of misdiagnosis and misunderstandings in their treatment. We will always do what is best for our patients to ensure they receive the care and support they need."

The NHS is under a legal obligation to offer translation services for free at the point of the delivery, so cuts to the costs seem unlikely.

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John O'Connell, chief executive of the TaxPayers' Alliance, called for efficiencies to be made in light of other pressures on the service.

Mr O'Connell said: "Taxpayers will be lost for words at how much is being spent on translation. With record waiting times for ambulances and accident and emergency, it is vital as much money as possible is freed up to tackle the backlogs.

"Trusts should look to cut costs by pooling resources and making more use of ready-translated material."

Here is a list of the languages used at Bolton NHS Foundation Trust in the three years up to March 2022:

Akan, Albanian, Amharic, Arabic, Assyrian, Behdini, Bengali, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Burmese, Cantonese, Croatian, Czech, Dari, Dinka, Farsi, French, Greek, Gujarati, Haitian, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Karen, Kinyarwanda, Korean, Latvian, Lingala, Lithuanian, Malayalam, Mandarin, Mandingo, Mirpuri, Mongolian, Nepali, Oromo, Pashto, Polish, Portuguese, Punjabi, Romanian, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Shona, Sinhalese, Slovak, Slovene, Somali, Sorani, Spanish, Sudanese, Swahili, Sylheti, Tamil, Telugu, Thai, Tigrinya, Turkish, Twi, Ukrainian, Urdu, Vietnamese, Wolof, Yoruba.