Sandwell Hospital in West Bromwich is one of the sites run by the trust

Sandwell and West Birmingham Hospitals NHS Trust, which runs the City, Sandwell and Rowley Regis hospitals, is cutting 800 jobs to save up to �20m.

Also affected are 43 senior managers, 170 health care assistants, 224 clerical staff and 77 other staff, including physiotherapists.

The cuts are the latest in a series of job losses in English hospitals.

The University Hospital of North Staffordshire NHS Trust announced last month it was to cut 1,000, jobs.

Freeze on vacancies

Last week it emerged that 800 jobs were to go at the Birmingham and Black Country hospitals.

The Royal College of Nursing said it had been given the breakdown of the latest job cuts by Sandwell and West Birmingham Hospitals NHS Trust.

It reveals that 252 nurses and 40 doctors are to lose their jobs.

The trust, which has more than 7,000 staff and serves a population of 500,000, has imposed a freeze on vacancies and asked staff to consider voluntary redundancy or early retirement.

It said its annual budget of �308m would fall to �303m in the next financial year and a �3m debt had to be repaid.

It has also seen its expenditure on staff rise from �180m in 2003/4 to �217m in the last year.

A spokesman told BBC News on Tuesday that, because a 90-day consultation period with unions had now started, it was unable to comment on which areas would be affected.