Hospital bosses in south-east London are paying millions for private security guards as assaults on staff soar, an investigation has found.

Nearly £5 million has been paid out since 2012 on security teams at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Woolwich and at Lewisham Hospital.

The NHS trust running the hospitals has been paying an increasing bill for security staff following an upward trend in the number of attacks on hospital workers.

Trusts – including Lewisham and Greenwich, which provided the data – hire security teams to protect doctors and nurses from potentially violent members of the public.

In figures obtained through a freedom of information request, it has been revealed that security at Lewisham Hospital has cost an annual average of £651k since 2012.

In Woolwich, an average of £419k has been paid out for security since 2013, making a combined total of £4.8 million.

A spokesman for the trust said the costs have been consistent over the last five years.

They said: “The trust is committed to providing a safe and secure environment for staff, patients and visitors so that we can give our patients the highest quality care.

“The NHS as a whole has seen costs rise for all services in line with inflation, and the trust’s costs for private security have remained consistent over the past five years.”

At both hospitals, the bill has been increasing yearly as the number of attacks on staff has rocketed by a shocking 159 per cent.

From 2013 to 2017 there were 1,357 reported physical and verbal attacks at the two hospitals – an average of 339 incidents a year.

Across the two sites, there were 197 incidents of violence and abuse in 2013, a figure that jumped to 511 in 2017.

The number of physical attacks at Queen Elizabeth more than doubled in that time-frame, from 19 to 55.

The spokesman said: “There has been an increase in recent years in the number of assaults on NHS staff, and we welcome the new Assaults on Emergency Workers (Offences) Act 2018, which offers more protection for emergency workers.

“We encourage staff to report all instances of violence, aggression and abuse, and our head of security works closely with police colleagues and the Crown Prosecution Service to address racial abuse, hate crimes and physical assaults on staff.”

Just over 50 trusts around the country pay out for private security, according to previous reports.