NHS employees hit back at attempts to take away their high-sugar chocolate bars, executives heard.

At a meeting of Swindon Clinical Commissioning Group’s staff forum, bosses suggested cutting sugary treats from the NHS organisation’s office tuck shop.

The move did not go down well for managers at the quango, which is responsible for commissioning healthcare for more than 230,000 people living in Swindon and Shrivenham,

Diane Walsh, workforce lead, told the CCG's governing body: “Our first attempt at talking about this at a staff partnership forum was met with some comments like, ‘We’re adults we make our own choices.’ It was really, really interesting given the climate in which we work.

“What we've done as a compromise is limit some of the goodies and put them in different places so it’s not so easily seen.”

Reflecting on the episode, Ms Walsh said: “What it teaches us is when we tell people about why reducing sugar content is a good thing and having too much sugar is a bad thing, they don’t always take it lying down.”

CCG governor Maggie Arnold suggested following the lead of a Gloucestershire hospital: "We put up a farmshop that looked like a farm cart and put healthy options on it and within a matter of days that was sold out and the chocolate bars remained on the shelves."