Hospitals, schools and ambulance bosses are spending hundreds of thousands of pounds a year paying for priests.

Some hospital trusts are spending more than £100,000 a year on chaplains at a time when they are being asked to make huge savings.

The Brighton Humanist Society criticised the expenditure and said the money would be better spent on essential services instead.

Bill McIlroy, from Brighton Humanist Society, said: “If a person in a hospital ward really wants consolation surely they can have someone from their own church come to see them rather than an unknown coming around on the state payroll.”

Figures obtained by The Argus using the Freedom of Information Act show that Western Sussex Hospitals NHS Trust, which runs Worthing Hospital, Southlands Hospital in Shoreham and St Richard’s Hospital in Chichester, spent £170,000 on one full-time and six part-time chaplains in 2010/11.

In the same period Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust, which runs Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton and Princess Royal Hospital in Haywards Heath, spent more than £100,000.

South East Coast Ambulance Service said it paid expenses costs to 40 chaplains at a total cost of £15,000.

East Sussex County Council said three schools under its control – St Richard’s Catholic College in Bexhill, Bishop Bell School in Eastbourne and Glyne Gap School in Bexhill – employed chaplains at a combined cost of nearly £90,000.

West Sussex County Council used the chaplaincy services of a reverend at no cost to the taxpayer. Brighton and Hove City Council said it did not provide grants for religious organisations “for the purposes of religious advancement”.

A Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust spokeswoman said chaplain costs would be reduced in the current financial year as the role was reduced to the equivalent of just two full-time posts.