Doctors and nurses who refuse to have a flu jab this winter could be banned from working with patients, the NHS regulator has warned.

Health chiefs announced on Friday that frontline staff who fail to get the vaccine will be forced to explain themselves and may be “redeployed” away from wards.

The significant hardening of policy follows the crisis in NHS hospitals last winter, principally in A&E, driven by the worst outbreak of influenza in seven years.

Despite the threat posed by the condition, nearly one third of frontline health care workers had not been vaccinated.

Experts believe this exacerbated the pressures faced by hospitals due to higher than necessary absence through sickness, as well as unvaccinated staff spreading the virus among patients without necessarily falling ill themselves.

Figures suggest that a third of last winter’s increase in emergency admissions were flu-related

The new mandatory policy from NHS Improvement was announced alongside £145 million to prepare hospitals for the upcoming flu season.

This will include the provision of two additional wards at the Royal Stoke University Hospital, where last January a senior emergency doctor publicly apologised for the “third world conditions” endured by patients in A&E.