The trust said it would try to keep redundancies to a minimum

The Mid Yorkshire Hospitals NHS trust, which covers Dewsbury and Wakefield, estimates it will be able to lose the positions over the next five years.

A trust spokesman said it could make the savings through natural turnover and spending less on temporary staff.

He said redundancies could not be ruled out, but it was hoped they would be kept to a minimum.

The trust said it also wanted to reduce the amount spent on equipment while treating more patients in less time.

We anticipate being able to achieve this without the need to make large-scale redundancies Toby Lewis

But it's turnaround director Toby Lewis said patient safety would not be compromised.

"I would like to be clear that we have not announced 1,100 redundancies," he said.

"We do need to reduce our pay bill by �18m over the next two years.

"We anticipate being able to achieve this without the need to make large-scale redundancies.

"However, we have been open that we cannot rule out redundancies at this stage and we are working with staff to keep them to a minimum.

"We do know that we can make savings by reducing expenditure on temporary staff and through natural turnover and redeployment of staff.

"To put this in context, we currently spend �18m on temporary staff, have 455 vacancies across the trust and a turnover rate of 12%, which is around 800 staff."

Mr Lewis said the trust had involved its doctors and nurses in developing plans for change.

He added: "I would like to reassure local people that in changing the way we provide our services to reduce costs, we will ensure that patient safety will not be compromised and we will continue to meet national waiting time standards."

The Mid Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust, which has a �300m budget, has "long-standing financial problems" and overspent its budget by more than �30m two years ago.

That deficit has been halved to �14.6m for 2005/06.