PRINCESS Margaret Hospital has emerged from one of its "toughest years" to retain a reputation as one of the best performing hospitals in the South West.

Swindon and Marlborough NHS Trust, which also runs Savernake Hospital, has been awarded two stars out of a possible three in an annual review of all 166 NHS trusts in the country.

The rating is unchanged since the system was launched last year.

Chief executive Sonia Mills said: "We are pleased to have retained our two stars.

"It has been a very difficult year for us with a rise in emergency admissions, delayed discharges and of course a huge amount of time and effort has had to go into planning for our move to the new hospital.

"Despite all that we have met most of our targets and continued to provide a service which has earned us two out of a possible three stars from the Govern-ment.

"This has been achieved through the superb efforts, dedication and sheer hard work of our staff they are the real stars."

She stressed, however, that the staff were not complacent and there were areas for improvement. "We will be looking closely at how we can do things better," she said.

"Last year was challenging and the coming year with the move of hospital will be equally so. We have continued to provide a generally high level of service and this is a great tribute to everyone involved."

The star rating system is one of the ways the Government measures the effectiveness of every trust in the country.

It looks at four key areas key indicators which look at the trust's performance against key targets set at the start of the year, clinical focus which measures the clinical quality of care, patient focus which looks at how well the organisation treats patients and staff focus, examining how well the organisation treats its staff.

These are broken down into 21 separate areas which are given a rating and then are combined to form the overall star rating.