Hospital in job cuts bombshell

AS many as 1,000 jobs are to go across the Pennine Acute Hospital Trust over the next year as it tries to save £45million.

Staff were told on Friday their jobs could be at risk as the trust, which runs the Royal Oldham Hospital, announced it would have to cut up to a tenth of its workforce.

However bosses, who also manage hospitals in Rochdale, North Manchester and Bury, say they will do their best to avoid redundancies.

The figures are the knock-on effects of the national need to make up £20billion of efficiency savings by 2014/15.

John Saxby, chief executive of The Pennine Acute Trust, said: “I believe it is right for the trust to consider all options in its efforts to reduce costs and work more efficiently so we can provide safe, high quality, reliable and sustainable services through this economic downturn and beyond.

“The trust has never had to resort to compulsory redundancies in the past as a way of balancing its budget and I do not see any reason why we would need to resort to such measures now.

“We still have a reasonable level of natural turnover of staff in any one year.”

To avoid redundancies the trust plans to redeploy some of its 10,000 staff into vacancies and reduce overtime to provide hours for permanent staff.

Unions have retaliated with scepticism.

Gary Owen, regional officer for Unite, said: “These cuts are huge in comparison to the amount of staff.

“It is difficult to see how they can be achieved without a massive impact on front-line services that locals expect and value.

“They are not a surprise per se as cuts have been seen in other parts of the region but not on this scale.

“There are hard times ahead. In terms of redeployment of staff, you can’t fit square pegs in round holes if the skills don’t match up.”

Cost-cutting tactics such as slashing routine operations at evenings and weekends and scrapping first class travel for staff have already been implemented, but are not enough to make the multi-million-pound savings.

Monthly payroll savings of £1.34million have been achieved by reducing the use of agency staff.

Mr Saxby added: “The scale of the financial challenge facing us is unprecedented.

“I understand that individual members of staff may be concerned about their own future.

“As we work through the next year to secure the future for our permanent staff I do not underestimate the personal challenges some people will face in adapting to new roles, new locations and new colleagues.”