NHS workers will tonight protest against building county hospitals with private money.

Their anger comes days after the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre in Oxford signed a financial deal to guarantee funding for a new £35m hospital.

The 134-bed development will be funded through a Private Finance Initiative, where new buildings are paid for by the private sector and the NHS pays "rent" for the following 30 years.

Support workers, including maintenance, catering and cleaning, working for the NOC, will become employees of private financiers Albion in July, even though the new hospital will not be completed until 2005.

Union leaders claim the move means staff will lose NHS pensions and benefits and that the NHS will have no control over them for three decades. Mark Ladbrooke, chairman of Oxfordshire Unison, said: "All this new budget money for the NHS is just going to be used on PFI costs. It's very much a concern.

"The private sector will have us over a barrel and we'll have to carry on paying out for services."

The Oxfordshire Against Privatisation rally -- to be held at Oxford Town Hall in St Aldate's tonight at 7.30pm -- will also protest about similar PFI deals due to be introduced at the John Radcliffe Hospital and Churchill Hospitals in Headington.

A NOC spokesman said support staff were being transferred to Albion in July to help with the development.

This will be done in stages, with departments closing and moving at different times.