HUNDREDS of back office jobs are to go at Colchester General Hospital in a bid to get out of the red.

Dr Lucy Moore, chief executive, revealed the plans to cut 240 human resources, IT and finance jobs by March 31, 2016 in an email.

She said compulsory redundancies could not be ruled out, but said they will be “few in number”.

However, Dr Moore said there would be no let-up in plans to recruit 150 nurses.

She said: “We do not expect to lose any clinical posts, but there will be a root and branch restructuring of the corporate side of the trust, which will involve areas such as estates and facilities, human res-ources, finance and information technology.

“Unfortunately, I cannot rule out compulsory redundancies, but if there are any, they will be few in number.

“The majority of the reduction in our workforce will be achieved by not recruiting to posts which are vacant, by restructuring our corporate services and by redeploying staff.”

Unison has criticised the plans, which aim to reduce Colchester Hospital University NHS Foundation Trust’s £30million deficit.

Tracey Lambert, head of health at Unison east of England, said: “When they go it means clinician staff have to step in to do their work.

“We have had issues with Colchester over the last 12 months and we need people in human resources. They are a necessity.

“We will be working with the trust to negate the job losses and hopefully make sure there aren’t any complusory redundancies.

“While the Government claims it is putting more money into the NHS, all but one of the trusts in the area are running at a deficit.

“We will be raising this issue with the Department of Health.” Yesterday, the Gazette revealed the trust had warned its £21million deficit will rocket to £45million in the next year if it does not make £15million of savings and borrow £25million from the Department of Health.

It hopes to reduce the deficit to £19million by 2016/17.

A trust spokesman said: “We are convinced we can reduce our workforce and staffing costs while at the same time driving up the quality of the clinical services we provide.

“We do not expect to lose any clinical posts and the vast majority of roles that disappear will be from the corporate side of the trust.”

He said reducing the need for agency nurses and replacing interim staff with substantive appointments will also save money.