Jobs to go at pricing agency

Under a rationalisation plan, the town centre office of the Prescription Pricing Authority will close and staff will relocate to Horwich.

The move, which will be completed by October next year, will see the closure of PPA offices in Preston, Manchester, Liverpool and St George's Road in Bolton, with up to 200 job losses spread across all four sites.

The changes are part of a national reorganisation by the authority, with other jobs losses in Yorkshire and the North-east.

In all, around 600 jobs are expected to go from the current total of 2,800 staff - a reduction of more than 20 per cent.

The PPA in St George's Road employs 358 staff and relocation will begin by July next year. It is not known how many jobs in Bolton will be affected.

It is anticipated that the four buildings will close in October 2006 and that job losses will number between 150 and 200 in the North-west.

The jobs will go after the PPA announced the installation of a new computer system which, it claims, will reduce the cost of processing prescriptions by £20 million. The PPA said the money saved will be returned to the Department of Health for investment in other NHS services.

Michael King, the PPA's director of planning and corporate affairs said: "Our computer systems are 12 years old and due for replacement.

"The new system will use high-speed scanning equipment and intelligent character recognition software to automate the capture of printed information from prescription forms."

The PPA handles nearly 700 million NHS prescriptions from pharmacists all over England.

Each one is priced so that the pharmacists are paid the NHS rate for the medicines they supply and GPs see the costs of the drugs they have prescribed.

PPA chief executive Nick Scholte said: "We are working closely with the trade union Unison and with staff who may be affected to minimise the impact of these reductions."

The consolidated North-west division will be located in a new building in Horwich.