A residential clinic for injured service personnel evacuated from Iraq and Afghanistan is so full that 20 of the permanent staff are having to live in a local Travelodge hotel to provide more space.

The Headley Court Defence Medical Rehabilitation Centre, which provides prosthetic limbs for the most severely wounded soldiers, has become overwhelmed with patients. In recent months they have mostly been from Afghanistan because of the heavy fighting against the Taleban.

More than 300 Service personnel have been “seriously” or “very seriously” wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan since the campaigns began. Many will have lost at least one limb or have been blinded.

Headley Court, near Dorking, Surrey, has acquired a world-class reputation for rehabilitating severely disabled members of the Armed Forces. It also treats servicemen and women who have suffered severe neurological injuries.

The centre caters for a maximum of 50 people at a time. With seriously wounded soldiers and marines being evacuated from Helmand province in southern Afghanistan on a regular basis, the facility has run out of space.

The Ministry of Defence confirmed that 20 of the medical staff had agreed to move out of their rooms to provide extra beds for patients.

The staff have been moved to a Travelodge at Dorking. The normal cost of a single room is £46 to £55 a night. This would mean a weekly bill of £6,440 to £7,700, although there are cheaper deals for booking several weeks in advance.

An MoD spokesman said of the arrangement for staff to live at the Travelodge: “This is not only an extremely unsatisfactory situation, it is also a very costly alternative.”

To cope with the demands at Headley Court, the MoD has also applied for planning permission to build a temporary two-storey, 58-bed accommodation block at the centre. A 30-bed temporary annexe was opened in the summer. Headley Court is set in 85 acres of landscaped gardens and is close to Epsom racecourse.

Most of the military patients suffer from orthopaedic injuries and the aim of the intensive rehabilitation programme is to return the wounded to duty wherever possible or to prepare them for civilian vocational work.

Most patients at Headley Court stay for three weeks but some of the most severely injured have to remain there for long periods.

In September a charity called Help for Heroes was set up to raise £5 million to build a swimming pool and gymnasium at Headley Court. The centre has only a small hydrotherapy pool which can take six soldiers at a time.

Guardsman Stephen Ferguson, 31, of the 1st Battalion Scots Guards, was named by the Ministry of Defence yesterday as the soldier who died of wounds received in an accident involving a Warrior armoured vehicle near Basra city, Iraq, on Wednesday. He had been flown back to Britain for treatment.

Guardsman Ferguson, originally from Lanarkshire, was driving the Warrior on a routine patrol northeast of Basra when it slid into a canal while he was trying to manoeuvre the vehicle in the dark. His fellow soldiers freed him from the vehicle and gave first aid.

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