SMOKING shelters will be built at three hospital sites in Oxford.

Councillors on Oxford City Council’s east area planning committee have approved an application to build five shelters for smokers at the John Radcliffe, three at the Churchill and one at the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre.

They are for patients and visitors and not staff.

Smoking at the JR was banned by the then-Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals Trust in 2007 but hospital bosses have admitted it was not practical.

Seven councillors voted in favour of the application by the Oxford University Hospitals Trust and one abstained.

County director of public health Dr Jonathan McWilliam and the GP-led Oxfordshire Clinical Commissioning Group, which makes NHS funding decisions, had objected to the plans.