JOBS FREEZE ANNOUNCED BY HOSPITALS TRUST

In a statement the trust said: 'Overall, the number of posts the organisation expects to reduce this year is up to 250 (5% of workforce costs).

'Posts which are essential to maintaining safe and effective patient care will continue to be filled'

The Trust employs around 5,100 people and, in an average year, around 500 vacancies occur through natural staff movements and retirements.

The Trust's executive team plan to make the necessary savings to the pay bill through the review and security of vacant posts, continued restrictions in the use of expensive agency staff introduced last year, tight controls on the use of other temporary staff and closer scrutiny of all proposed new posts.

If the measures being put in place are successful, the Trust management, which runs hospitals at Eastbourne and Hastings, do not anticipate redundancies but will keep this under review.

The Trust has already made substantial savings in the pay bill in the previous financial last year through reducing the use of expensive agency staff, holding vacancies open and by good housekeeping all of which contributed to the Trust breaking even in year.

Kim Hodgson, Chief Executive East Sussex Hospitals NHS Trust, said: 'We cannot ignore the difficult financial position across the NHS locally.

'However, we recognise that this is difficult news for our staff, particularly when we have successfully managed our finances over the past year.

'We are concerned to minimise the effect on our committed, permanent staff who provide such an excellent service and we fully expect to make the savings without redundancies. We also recognise that the measures we plan to take will add to the pressures on us all, but that is preferable to large scale redundancies'