8:40am Sunday 2nd October 2005
By Local London Reporter
Three hundred job losses were announced by St George's Hospital last week in a bid by health bosses to tackle its spiralling deficit.
Managers at the Tooting hospital appeared to have lost the confidence of nurses' leaders, who supported last winter's 100 job cuts but this week declared themselves "dismayed" by the new redundancies.
St George's Healthcare NHS Trust is under severe pressure to break even by the end of 2007, and hopes that reducing its workforce will help cut its deficit from £21.7million to £12.5million by April 2006 as requested by the South West London Strategic Health Authority.
The trust, which is also closing 100 beds this year, said most of the 300 losses would be from expensive agency staff, with around 70 permanent staff at risk of redundancy, mainly in non-clinical positions.
Chief executive Peter Homa said: "This is a difficult time for us, but we need to go through it to get back on financial track. If we put off the tough decisions like this, even tougher decisions will need to be taken in future."
He said he knew people would fear that patient care will suffer, but claimed reducing patients' length of stay in hospital meant the same level of care was possible.
Councillor James Cousins, who heads Wandsworth Council's health scrutiny committee, said he was sympathetic but his committee would look at whether "in the push, they are closing beds and cutting staff before the efficiencies and changes in management have come to fruition".
Bernell Bussue, London director of the Royal College of Nursing, was not comforted, saying: "I am extremely dismayed to have had confirmation of these job losses, especially the nurse positions. I am particularly worried about this being the tip of the iceberg for cuts and job losses in London.
"This will add to the anxiety already felt around the consultation on the commissioning of a patient-led NHS, a reduction in primary health care trusts and what can only be described as the back-door privatisation of the NHS."
Tooting MP Sadiq Khan said he was disappointed, but added the decision was necessary. He said he had been guaranteed that only a minimum number of frontline nursing staff would be lost.
According to Battersea MP Martin Linton, the Government has increased the budget of St George's hospital by £150 million in the past five years up from £200million to £350million.
He said: "It's not easy to control expenditure in an organisation that is growing so fast. The fact that the hospital has overshot its budget is regrettable and it now has to rein back its expenditure in line with its income, just like any other organisation."
He added, however, that it was important to keep what was happening in perspective.
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