Royal Berkshire Hospital A&E now open and no longer on internal incident alert.

The A&E department is now fully reopen and accepting patients again after closing its doors to all but the critically ill on Friday.

A fire led to the hospital losing its electricity supply and forced it to declare an internal incident alert at the end of last week.

But, thanks to the efforts of doctors, nurses and porters, patients in the badly affected North Blocks and Battle Block were safely evacuated and are now being returned to the wards.

Mary Sherry, Chief Operating Officer for Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust, said: “I want to thank our staff for working tirelessly to keep our patients safe despite the challenging working conditions since Thursday morning. It was a real team effort from all staff across the hospital to keep our essential services running - including our nurses, doctors, catering staff, cleaners, porters, administrators, maintenance staff, volunteers, and managers, to name a few. I recognise that staff in Battle and North blocks have worked in some very difficult conditions over the last few days and I'd like to thank them specifically for their commitment to their patients and their colleagues during this period.

"On Saturday we restored full power to the parts of the hospital affected (Battle Block and North Block) using temporary generators. These generators will remain in place until our main circuits/power boards are secure and fixed.

“Yesterday we began a phased approach to return patients to Battle and North Blocks and this will continue throughout today. Our A&E is open, and we are no longer on internal incident status as we now have the capacity to bring patients into our hospital for care.

"I would also like to thank our patients and their relatives for bearing with us during this time, and our neighbouring hospitals, SCAS, community services, walk in centres and the Red Cross for the support they continue to provide."