HOSPITAL bosses have reassured people there are no plans to close Ellesmere Port Hospital after figures implied there would be no staff employed there from 2014.

Figures released under the Freedom of Information Act raised fears there may be plans to shed all 106 of the staff at the hospital by 2013.

The table, which included all nursing and clinical support staff at the centre, even suggested there would be less than no staff (-22) employed at the hospital from March 2013.

But Andrew Duggan, spokesman for the Countess of Chester Trust, said: “We would like to make it clear that there are no plans to close Ellesmere Port Hospital.

“The figures are not accurate. These figures are contained within a regional planning document that was not produced by the trust. The document basically asked to enter the current number of employees and it automatically applied a formula to determine projected staffing levels.

“It should be apparent that having -22 members of staff does not make any sense.

“In this case with the benefit of hindsight it may have been more appropriate for the trust to simply respond to the FOI request with a statement that made it clear that the trust has no specific plans in place to 2015, rather than apply a formula which is not appropriate.”

The trust do accept that they are being forced to make savings but insist that they will make every effort to prevent those cuts from affecting frontline staffing levels.

Mr Duggan added: “We need to save £6-7m per year over three years. We have been running a programme to reduce waste and improve efficiency in all areas of the trust and we have been working closely with front line staff to identify areas where we can improve.

“This programme has been running for a year already and has delivered over £6m of saving so far. In this time, the number of staff employed by the trust has reduced by approximately 60. This has mainly happened due to retirements, voluntary departure schemes and natural turnover. Only one member of staff has been made redundant. At the same time, the number of nurses working on wards has actually gone up.”