A WARD at Scotland's newest children's hospital has had to close just two years after opening.

Ward 1A at the Royal Hospital for Children, at the new £842m super hospital complex, will be shut until July 17.

Politicians have branded the shut down "shocking", citing a "staff shortages" as the reason.

However NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde insist the decision to close the ward, which is used for day surgery and sleep studies, is due to a "decrease in planned patient numbers" over the summer holidays.

A spokeswoman said the decrease is deliberate, with fewer surgeries being planned over the summer months due to staff and patient holidays.

Kevin Hill, Women and Children's Services director, at NHSGGC, said: "This is a five day ward, and the decision to temporarily suspend activity for the first two weeks of the summer holidays was taken due to significant decrease of planned patient activity throughout the Royal Hospital for Children and enables us to also meet the higher level of requests for annual leave from our clinical staff.

“The hospital typically experiences a decrease in planned patient numbers during July due to summer holidays.

“The small group of patients who use the sleep service have already had appointments scheduled from 17 July onwards.”

Anas Sarwar, Labour's health spokesman, said the closure was due to "failure to properly manage our NHS."

He said: "It is simply not good enough.

"It is a shocking decision just as we enter into the summer holidays. This is supposed to be Scotland’s flagship hospital.

“But because of the SNP’s mismanagement of our NHS and poor workforce planning, we’ve seen a children’s ward having to close because of staff shortages..

“The decision to cut training numbers has left devastating consequences, leaving even more pressure on staff, services cut and now this example of an actual ward closing."