HOSPITAL staff on Merseyside will strike for five days next week over a back-pay row.

More than 500 clinical support workers, who assist nursing staff, are to walk out over the refusal of Wirral University Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust (WUTH) to pay them for working above their pay band, Unison said.

The union said that their pay-band-two job descriptions meant they should only have been undertaking personal care, but a survey found most were routinely performing clinical tasks corresponding to band three or higher.