THE £3 million super-laundry at Blackburn's new super hospital keeps breaking down, bosses have admitted.

Health chiefs are scratching their heads over what is wrong with the laundry at the Royal Blackburn Hospital, Haslingden Road, which opened 18 months ago.

Now they are to literally put more pressure on to see if they can get it sorted once and for all.

East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust and the private consortium which built the hospital and laundry, Consort Healthcare, are to fund a temporary steam generator.

It is hoped that by increasing the steam pressure using the machine, a massive vertical press which essentially irons the clothes flat, will not grind to a halt.

Finance chief Stephen Brookfield, sent a message of reassurance and stressed that the problems had not left wards short of clean linen.

But he said extra staff were being brought in to cope with the delays.

Mr Brookfield said: "Sometimes the machine jams and we believe this is because the steam pressure is not high enough. It doesn't have any effect on the service but we are having to put more staff on to ensure we get the required throughput. "That is not as cost effective as it could be."

Mr Brookfield, the trust's director of finance, information and planning, said: "It has been a long-standing issue since the summer and we have got a plan with Consort to try and resolve it one way or the other.

"We have tried various other measures and these have been unsuccessful in resolving the problem. If the cause was found to be steam pressure and it was an issue for Consort then Consort would reimburse the trust for the cost of the temporary steam generator."

When the laundry opened in September 2005 it was hailed by trust chiefs as having the "latest high tech equipment" and would be "easier for staff to operate".

A spokeswoman for Consort said: "If there is a difference in pressure and it does help then we will put it right."

The laundry washes as many as 240,000 items of linen a week.