SPY cameras and recording devices will be used by the Great Western Hospital to clamp down on abusive smokers.

The move has been condemned by tobacco lovers who say the hospital’s anti-smoking policy is going too far.

It comes after figures obtained by the Adver showed that Great Western Hospitals NHS Trust, which runs the hospital, has spent £30,000 on a number of projects designed to stub out smoking from its site.

The town’s hospital went smoke free four months ago and yesterday two smoking officers, who were hired to patrol the hospital site, were kitted out with fluorescent jackets, complete with shoulder cams and a recording devices.

The trust claims the cameras have been purchased not only to ensure the officers’ safety but also to provide more incentive for smokers to move along to the pavement outside the hospital.

However smokers say the cameras are an invasion of their privacy.

An employee who was found smoking a metre away from the main road, said: “I think that is a bit over the top to be honest. It’s not like we are breaking the law. I think everyone needs to calm down. Making us come down here standing on the pavements smoking is a bad image for the hospital.

“At least they could provide us with somewhere to sit down or shelter of some sort.”

A 35-year-old man, who was visiting a patient, said: “I am a taxpayer, this is not an illegal substance.

“I should be allowed to do it when I want and where I want as long as I am outside.”

However, the hospital insists the move is a positive step forward and is in the interest of patients, staff and visitors.

A spokeswoman for Great Western Hospitals NHS Trust said that the official policy for how the cameras would be used had not yet been devised.

She said: “The cameras will not be on all the time, they will be used as and when necessary.

“People or individuals will always be told beforehand that the camera is going to be switched on.

“The cameras are not there to deliberately catch people out but to help reduce the number of smokers onsite and anti-social behaviour.”

She added that other hospitals including Plymouth and Aintree have seen positive results after the introduction of cameras.

Sean Ovenden, one of the hospital smoking officers who has been smoking for 24 years himself, said the amount of abuse he had to face has fallen from 10 to 15 incidents a week to almost none.

He said he used to get a lot of abuse when people didn’t know the rules.

“Now things have calmed down and people are usually quite friendly and move along easily,” he said.

He said that at the beginning of the scheme he was catching between 60 and 120 people a day who were smoking on the site, but that figure has now fallen to 40 a week.

Oonagh Fitzgerald, Great Western Hospital’s NHS Trust’s human resources director, said: “The annual cost to the NHS in treating people for smoking related diseases is £2.7bn, we feel that our total spend of £18,000 to date, as part of the Smokefree Compliance Initiative is a net gain to the tax payer and the NHS in helping to reduce smoking.”