MORE than 100 volunteers are to take part in an important decontamination practice session at Wexham Park Hospital this morning.

The exercise trains staff in how to deal with major incidents involving chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear disasters.

Although the exercise will go on until around 2pm, the hospital will remain open to visitors as normal.

Wexham Park, in Slough, is the designated hospital for patients from the High Wycombe area.

Hospital spokesman Gail King said: "This exercise is an important opportunity to put all the agencies through their paces and to test how well prepared we are should a real incident occur.

"Responding to an incident like this requires an integrated plan and we need to test how we work together in practice to see if there are things we could do even better."

Hospital officials added certain areas of the site, including Wexham Street, may be blocked off to visitors but Accident and Emergency services would not be affected.

Nine different agencies will be involved in the exercise.