Axe falls on 26 Midlands hospital jobs

Just 26 hospital workers have been made redundant at a Black Country hospital trust where 340 staff faced the possibility of losing their jobs.

Sandwell and West Birmingham Hospitals NHS Trust was ordered to deliver a £20 million cost improvement programme in the last financial year and earmarked 340 jobs to go. However, today it emerged just nine workers went through compulsory redundancies in the last year.

A further 17 staff went through voluntary redundancy.

The rest of the cuts were achieved through natural wastage and existing vacancies. A further 10 staff who were at risk were redeployed and one worker was moved to another hospital trust.

Trust spokeswoman Jessamy Kinghorn said: "The voluntary redundancies were not front-line staff and the quality of patient care has not suffered because of those job losses."

The cost-cutting programme formed part of a national drive to cope with reduced public sector funding. That was despite the trust delivering a £2.3m surplus for the previous financial year.

Mrs Kinghorn said that not only was the trust near to ensuring the £20m saving, but it had also managed to balance the books and again return a surplus of more than £2m.

She added: "We will know if we have managed to save £20m by the end of the financial year but at the moment it looks as if we have saved £20m.

"We are also on target for a surplus of £2.038m, which is what we aimed for. A lot of hard work has gone into the cost improvement plan to deliver a good financial performance while continuing to improve quality of care."

The trust serves City, Sandwell and Rowley Regis hospitals and treats more than 130,000 inpatients each year.

By Alex Homer