Singer Paul Young opens the Pre-operative Assessment Unit at the Luton and Dunstable University Hospital

He spoke to the staff about his experiences of growing up in Luton and congratulated them on their work looking after the community.

The new unit brings together almost all hospital pre-assessment in one place, replacing at least five other locations, and has a dedicated pharmacist and anaesthetist to give expert advice at the time of assessment.

Patients have the opportunity to go straight from their outpatient clinic to the drop-in service, reducing the number of visits they have to make to hospital.

All patients can now be pre-assessed as soon as they know they are having surgery, meaning that any clinical concerns can be identified more quickly and a plan put in place for their procedure.

It also means that there are lots of pre-assessed patients who can be offered their surgery at short notice when other patients have had to cancel at the last minute.