A PUBLIC meeting to discuss proposed job losses at the Royal Bolton Hospital has been organised.

The Save Bolton NHS campaign has called the meeting at 1pm on April 6 in the Lecture Theatre in Bolton Central Library.

A consultation has just ended into plans to axe 500 posts from Bolton NHS Foundation Trust.

Campaign co-ordinator, Karen Reissmann, said: “We have been told by David Wakefield, chairman of Bolton NHS Trust, that 500 posts gone ‘will not affect patient care’. How can this level of staff lost not affect patient care? In Mid Staffs hospital when they prioritised finances and made cuts, between 400 and 1,200 people died who should never have died. They ignored patients, relatives and staff who complained. We will not let this happen in Bolton.

“We need all our NHS staff. We are asking Bolton’s Health and Scrutiny Committee to call on the NHS Trust to suspend all redundancies until a review can take place which properly assesses the risks of these cuts.”

Each month, the trust has lost between £1.5 million and £1.7 million and it has forecast its debt to be £18.6 million by the end of the financial year.

On top of this debt, the trust has also borrowed £11 million from the Department of Health, which will need to be repaid. Chiefs also need to make savings of £50 million in the next three years due to Government spending cuts.