HUNDREDS of back office jobs are to go at Colchester General Hospital in an effort to help it claw out of the red.

Chief executive Dr Lucy Moore revealed to staff in an e-mail the trust would be losing the equivalent of 240 full-time staff from IT, human resources and finance by March 31, 2016.

In the letter, she said compulsory redundancies could not be ruled out, but added if there were any, they will be “few in number”.

Union Unison has hit out at the plans, which aim to reduce the hospital’s £30million deficit, and said while doctors and nurses would not be in the firing line, they would be left picking up the pieces with more demands on their time.

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 not a luxury, but a necessity. We will be working with the trust to negate the job losses and, hopefully, make sure there aren’t any compulsory redundancies.

“The point needs to be made that while the Government claims it is putting more money into the NHS, all but one of our trusts in the area are running at a deficit.”

This week, the trust also warned its deficit would rocket to £45million if it did not make £15million of savings and borrow £25million from the Department of Health.

In her letter to staff, Dr Moore said there would be no let-up on recruiting the 150 nurses it needed.

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 resources, finance and information technology.”