A union boss has hit out against job cuts at a Bradford health trust which she warned means “work simply won’t get done”.

A major national restructure of the NHS will see Primary Care Trusts disappear by April, 2013, when commissioning of services will be taken over by local clinical commissioning groups and national bodies such as Public Health England.

NHS Bradford and Airedale, which says it needs to save £2.9 million in management costs this year, has approved 34 applications for voluntary redundancy or early retirement but has warned that some staff are still at risk of losing their jobs.

Drawing a comparison with troubled care home company Southern Cross, Jackie Smith, Unison’s Bradford health branch secretary, said: “If you have a commissioning organisation that is so crippled by the Government’s cuts that we cannot be guaranteed that it is commissioning the right services and that it cannot police those services that they have commissioned because of lack of resources, you will end up with a Southern Cross scenario in health care.

“The restructure that we have been consulted on also looks very top heavy with lots of managers and fewer workers.”

But Matt Neligan, interim chief executive of NHS Bradford and Airedale, said a month-long consultation had been held with staff and the majority of workers would “slot in” to newly-created posts.

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