Hospital looking to axe 105 posts

Ipswich Hospital needs to make millions of pounds of savings

A hospital in Suffolk is looking at axing 105 posts as part of its bid to make £16m of savings.

Ipswich Hospital NHS Trust said it hoped to keep redundancies to a minimum and that many of the posts would be lost through normal staff turnover.

A hospital spokeswoman said last year "150 posts were 'lost' through natural wastage".

At a board meeting on Friday the Trust will also be considering raising car parking charges for staff.

Trust chief executive Andrew Reed in his report to the board, said: "The Trust faces a year in which the scale of financial challenge will dominate the agenda.

'Tremendous staff'

"However, it is critical to place this in the context of the core job to be done, to maintain and improve quality of services provided to patients.

"We need to find £16m of savings to achieve break-even in 2006/07. Managers across the Trust have been developing savings schemes and to date 230 individual schemes totalling £13m have been identified so we have further work to do.

"This hospital has tremendous staff and we have tried to minimise the impact of the changes we need to make on staff.

"At this stage, we have identified 105 posts - not 105 people - which will be lost across all staff groups throughout the hospital."