THE public were not consulted on renaming Scotland's largest hospital after the Queen because some people would have been disappointed, according to the chairman of the health board.

Andrew Robertson has outlined his reasons for deciding not to seek wider feedback on the Royal rebrand for the first time, as it emerged the name change and the Royal opening ceremony will cost more than £100,000.

The bill for altering signage alone has already mounted to £1650 and more work is yet to be costed.

The details of the bills were released by health board NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde along with some insight into how they reached the controversial decision to rename after they received multiple requests for the information.

What was once the new South Glasgow University Hospital, became the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital when it was opened by the Queen last month. Controversy followed with 12,620 people signing an online petition calling for the new name to be scrapped.

Last week Dr Keith McKillop, who works as a specialist in the £842m building, said he could not bring himself to utter the new name and wrote in The Herald: "Queen Elizabeth is the most potent symbol of the glaring inequalities in our society, a vivid representation of the growing gulf between rich and poor."

A small number of executive board members, six medical chiefs and six chief nurses were involved in discussions about the name change.

Five alternatives were considered. Four named the adult hospital after Queen Elizabeth, while one was simply: The Queen’s University Hospital.

The document says there was no requirement for consultation about the name change and in a letter to The Herald, Mr Robertson says: "Some people have asked why the new names were not consulted upon. It is my strong belief that in doing so there would be an inevitable series of competing names resulting in inevitable disappointment for the supporters of those not chosen."

Both his letter and the details released by NHS GGC suggest there was concern that the name South Glasgow University Hospital did not reflect the wider community it serves.

In addition the board says: "A big consideration was that, if the NHS board retained part of the names of the demitting hospitals (Southern General Hospital, Victoria Infirmary and Western Infirmary), this may have been seen as prejudicing the loyalties of staff from the hospitals whose names were being lost. It was considered a new hospital with a new name."

The new name appears to have been endorsed internally long before it was confirmed the Queen would officially open the building which also houses the renamed Royal Hospital for Children.

Mr Robertson says in his letter: "It was my hope that The Queen would be able to perform the official opening ceremony and, that if she was able to do so, adopting a Royal title would be wholly appropriate for this world-class facility which, together with Glasgow Royal Infirmary, provides the two major acute NHS inpatient facilities in Glasgow."

Staging the royal visit, including printing commemorative programmes cost £29,000, the celebratory lunch which was served to patients and a free lunch for staff cost £18,836. Three commemorative plaques to mark the opening cost £51,000, with the money for those coming out of the total capital building budget.

Together with the expenditure on signage the total reaches £100,486.

Ross Greer, Scottish Green MSP candidate for West of Scotland, said: "It's not hard to think of a few dozen ways to better spend £100,000 of NHS funds. Serious questions need to be asked as to how far in advance it was known that the hospital may be renamed and rebranded and whether this ridiculous waste could have been avoided. I don't think anyone could seriously argue that £51,000 on new plaques was an unavoidable and necessary spend.

"Aside from the cost itself it really does beggar belief that such an amazing new facility could not have been named after one of the many notable figures Scotland has contributed to the field of medicine."

In a statement NHS GGC said that even if the hospital had not been given a Royal name, "there would still have been an official opening ceremony, we would still have created commemorative plaques and would have certainly marked the opening of such fine buildings with a special lunch for staff and patients."