BBC Radio York Features

Tell us what you think... (Please include your phone number if you're happy for BBC Radio York to contact you.)

D.Foot
Blair/Brown chose to use management consultants to reform England, which has cost the taxpayer £billions. The IT schemes forced onto the NHS by the consultants have failed whilst top management consultants have become millionaires & their employees enjoyed salaries that nurses only dream of. The ideas like 'Choose & Book' thought up by New Labour are impractical. £Bns are ear-marked for such ideas & more £Bns taken from front line medical care to finance sorting out the mess which ensues. Very often the person appointed to sort out the chaos previously worked for the very consultancy responsible! This ensures the real truth does not surface and allows the government gravy train to continue. Politicians and their partners in crime are not interested in us. See PLUNDERING THE PUBLIC SECTOR by David Craig to learn where £70 billion went! Those with medical training will need to re-gain control of the NHS.

r.stansfield
money for: star wars, trident missiles, 2 aircraft carriers, 2 wars but not £10m for our hospitals. Is there any party with the interests of the people at heart?

Disillusioned
The Government have to take the lions share of the blame.Firstly, the proved chronic and continued underfunding.Secondly, forcing the NHS into ever more ludicrous strategies but not funding them. For example, insisting that all staff, yes all staff must undertake a child protection course even though the vast majority do not come into contact with children on a professional basis. This takes all these staff away from their work station to take the course, it also takes the tutors away from actually dealing with the children themselves in order to teach these courses.This is only one of many instances where the Government makes ludicrous demands without providing any funding for them. The list could go on forever. So far we have heard nothing from this caring Labour government - so sorry, they are all away on holiday, as were many of the upper management after they dropped this bombshell on the staff!

Kevin
I have the distint impression that the Hospital has "more chiefs than indians", get rid of some of the, obviously, ineffective managers, saving money to finance the "workers", needed.

Ken Hobson
I was with British Rail, Red Star Parcels, which was closed down, many employees, were placed on "Benefits" & in money & kind, received MORE for staying at home, instead of working, 38 hours per week.WHY doesn't the Goverment step in & keep nurses looking after patients, for in both cases, the TAXPAYER pays to costs.

Demoralised Nurse
Clinically, Scarborough Hospital runs on a skeleton staff who are not only hard working but loyal to their workplace and all it represents. Recent downgrading as a result of Agenda for Change has hit nursing morale hard, this news has kicked us while we are down. We knoe we have the support of the good people of Scarborough and its surrounding area, its a crime we do not have the same from the Government.

Peter Bryan
If any jobs are to go they should come from the overpaid people at the top. As for advertising for two new jobs at the salaries been reported it goes to show that the people running the Scarborough Trust should be the ones to go.

Lisa
I use to work at Scarborough Hospital and we were on a bed shortage the majority of the time. I am sure it will be a cottage hospital with just a minor injury dept soon. The staff were never kept up to date. The management said one ward was closing down for refurnishment and would re-open but it never did. That is why Staff we not have trust in the management in Scarborough.

Michael Barrett
I just saw this on the news, and a councillor (can't remember his name, sorry) said the appointment of two new directors was due to past incompetencies in management. I suppose, then, that the first jobs on the chopping block are those of the managers who brought them into this mess?

John
It seems to me that it is Govt that is causing this. They are the ones that have limited the amount of money and authorised such large salaries and excessive management structure. They are the ones that don't take into account that we have a large migrant & holiday population. No doubt they calculate the funding on the basis of the local population that are registered to vote! So that won't be accurate. Politicians they promise all and give nowt

Dennis Holdroyd
Not only are these so called managers ruining the lives of the staff they are causing alarm amongst patients waiting for treatment. What sort of care is this. The first to go should be the management with a government team brought in to sort out the mess and leave working staff jobs alone you stupid people you cannot run a hospital without workers managers do sod all that is of use. I have had close family cared for in these units and the nurses are good. The management is pathetic.

John Smith
Looks like the bosses are looking after themselves as usual Whilst the poor ol foot soldiers are up too get the bulletThe managers fouled up they should go not take on more of them

David an in patient
The care and attention given by the nursing staff is second to none. They are understaffed and undersupported by management. The ward I am on was visited recently by the chief executive, who neither spoke to the staff nor any of the patients.The Advert in last Thursdays Trader for non executive directors on £5k a year for 2 hours a week just shows the contempt the board hold for the rest of yhe staff in the hospital.. If a saving has to be made get rid of 1 manager instead of 3 nurses or even more cleaners!If a worker is incompetant he is sacked without a golden handshake or being put on "gardening leave". What is good for one should be good for all including the Chief!!

Kath Wilkie
Underfunding by government ' £55 per head:The population of Scarborough Borough is approx; 107,000 but the catchment area is approx 250,000 and includes Scarborough, Ryedale and Bridlington. Doesn't take a genius to work out how much the government have underfunded this district.

Devastated Danielle
They need to get rid of all top management,bring matrons back who loved and cared for their wards and paitents. I came out of the NHS as a reg. nurse 4 years ago,the basic hygiene and care on the wards where slipping then.there are too many chiefs and not enough indians ( nurses )our caring natures have been exploited for years.I work with the older people on the comunity now and try and prevent falls etc. The vol. organisations in Scarborough do fantastic work especially Age Concern Scarborough and District. The hospital should work closer with them and share the load our loder people deserve that and more.I hope the NHS bosses will be reading these coments

Howard
Is this what the Council bigwigs and Town leaders call regeneration, how many more jobs do we have to lose, look at the tourist industry, Dale Electric, now the Hospital, the Town is in freefall, who's going to wake up and give us some leadership and stop all this spin, the place is dying we need decent roads, new industry etc, what on earth is " The Sands" going to do to reverse whats going on!! It'll be soon time to leave!!

Bob James
Do you think this would have happened if Laurie Quinn was still the Scarborough MP?

GrumpyTyke
How can the management team stay in place after overseeing such a fiasco. Will their redundancy package reflect this performance? Of course not they will end with fat bonuses to ease their retirement pushing the trust even further into debt.

Bob Ellis
Why is it that the only comment available is from those who have a vested interest in maintaining their income/position by saying the things that ensure they stay in power, ie politicians and managers. Were is the balance in the arguement?? (Note from Moderator: Do you mean that this page isn't balanced Bob?)

jon fallis
i think that such job cuts only represnt a possible future of the NHS with goverment initiatives leading trust to finacial indepedance through Foundation trust status this unfortunate event could sadly become more common place with ground level staff losing jobs to an over managed resourse. In my own area there have been three extra levels of nhs management introduced in the last ten years.

Ross
There is no way that the Trust can axe 600 jobs and still maintain patient care. I can't believe that this news item hasn't been given a more visible position on the BBC website! It is very alarming news, not just for those who live in the affected area - who knows which NHS Trust will be next.Something like this should prompt a government inquiry.

retired hospital employee
If Scarborough Hospital got rid of the highly paid Managers along with their Asst. Managers, secretaries etc.{who spend hours going to their endless meetings and solving nothing) by at least one third, that would solve most of their problems.

G
Do the remaining senior managers/execs take a 33% pay cut for managing a third less staff?

yet another disillusioned NHS manager
It does semm ludicrous that 2 jobs with salaries circa £70k and £75k were advertised in the Health Service Journal only last week.I cannot believe that the trust financial position has come as bolt out of the blue? How can what amounts to a reduction of one third of the workforce not have a serious impact on health care delivery. Have that third been sat around twiddling their thumbs.How much has the recent NHS re-organisation cost, both in financial terms and impact on patients and on staff. All of the big chiefs seem to have kept or secured posts. Get rid of them and get rid of the unneeded Strategic Health Authority and spend that money on patient care

Rebecca Roche
I think it's absolutely ridiculous. For a start people don't want to be employed by the NHS due to how staff get treated. The NHS is constantly trying to reach targets rather than concentrating on the health and wellbeing of the patients. This obviously excluding the staff who work their damn hardest and endure terrible amounts of stress. But what will cutting jobs prove ? It always seems to be about the money and where will this extra £10 million go ? I think that more staff should be employed for a start not got rid of. People struggle to see a dentist never mind a doctor.

Disillusioned NHS manager
It really is time someone got a grip. How can it be that we managers are expected to attend meeting after meeting to discuss yet another strategy with no meaningful outcomes? This is where the problem is and yet the NHS wants to lose the staff that actually do the work. Roll on retirement!!!!

Kevin
Get rid of the big chiefs with fat salaries and let Doctors and Nurses do their jobs. They are talking about low morale... Are you kidding us. As a Specialist Registar I earn £32.000 per annum.

e bennett
i think the nhs should get rid of the big chiefs, to many of them and they are overpaid. they would save a lot of money.

Steve Marshall
Whilst the new Prime Minister talks about further reform within the NHS how can this be for the benefit of people in the North Yorkshire area. Whilst there are plans to axe 600 jobs there are no firm plans on where these redundancies will hit and for all associated employees they will have to endure a couple of months wait to find out whether there jobs are safe. The area itself is not the best in terms of employment prospects and coupled with the bad weather of the last couple of months, this is not good news for the area. I was recently a patient within the Bridlington hospital and I would be the first to congratulate the team on the excellent service they provided, with these cuts in mind this will jeopardise lives and will result in a deterioration of services. Hopefully the residents in this area will revolt!

Dr. Robert Madar
Increasing politicisation of the NHS over many years and the target policy forced the situation where the NHS is grossly overmanned in many areas, overmanaged, overspending. When will politicians realise they have to keep their grubby fingers away from the NHS? what happened is what happens when a service industry is forced to become subservient to political interests.

Dr Mike Keen
600 losses at once makes the news; why be concerned?After all there has been a progressive loss of people, with these people loosing their respective means on income, over the last several years.After all we are told everyting is fine; is it not?

Howard
I've just looked at the Scarborough & North East Yorkshire Trust website to see what vacancies, if any, are listed.Only two are listed - I was expecting none !What are they? Director level posts, at annual salaries of about £70,000 each !!!Talk about leading by example !!

Eucina William Khan
There are too many agency nurses recruited from abroad this should be stopped so that the young british nurses could have a chance

martin
i am disgusted. I note the A andE dept will be ok. Common people there is more the nhs than this, what about all the other services?

Irene Warren
Makes 600 redundant - make hugh payments to senior staff who get made redundant - how much of the 10 million will they recoup. Fat cats for life and less senior staff especially the older members will have problems getting jobs as has happened 'down south'.

Anna Trench
This is due to the 30% pay rise given to GPs and consultants. The government were taken to the cleaners by the BMA. Essential services have been cut: OTs, SALTs and Physiotherapists. Why pay doctors more money? Basically they then go part time or retire. Extra money should have gone to basic staff.

Jonathan Lodge
This has been a long time coming and is a direct consequence of the utterly stupid way the NHS is (dis)organised. This had to happen once the commissioning purse strings were misguidedly given to PCTs. The only way they can make ends meet is to withold funds from the acute trusts. Having reduced waiting lists once a PCT finds any kind of procedure has a waiting list less than 6 months long they will stop those procedures until the list is back up to 6 months - the point at which it affects their star rating. Unfortunately the acute trusts cannot work on such a stop start basis.Still at least there will be more jobs for consultants working out how to resolve the problem - draining money away from the core business of delivering healthcare.I have worked in various finance roles in the NHS for several years and have first hand experience of the utter stupidity of it all.

Tony Tooth
To claim that sacking a third of the SNEY NHS Trust workforce will not affect services could only be true regarding so many people if they have been doing virtually nothing up to now anyway. That's clearly ludicrous - but IF it were to be believed then the NHS Chief Exec should resign for employing so many people to no purpose in the first place. In a nutshell, one way he's not being honest, the other way he's admitting incompetence.

Jane
This just shows that the central mantra of break-even at all cost has devastating effects for local communities. Axing this number of posts must mean that services are to be severely cut back or closed, once they are gone it will be impossible to reinstate. A very sorry state of affairs.

Adam, Somerset
I came into the World in Scarborough General, 54 years ago. Today's generation need the same care that I and my Mother received. The Health Trust, and Govt, must be very sure that these cuts would not deny that care before proceeding.

julian wright
the irony is that on the trust website 2 posts are advertised with a combined salary of approx £150,000. Both senior managers...no suprise there then!

David
No, absolutely not acceptable. Unison PLEASE RESIST THIS!

Roy
Can you imagine the reaction from Labour and the unions if this had gone on with a Tory government in power? It's a disgrace what Labour has done to the NHS.

Dr Beardsley. GP Scarborough
This is an isolated but geographically large area, with poor, congested road conections to other main hospitals, this will put lives at risk

Andrew Mercer
its very sad to hear that what has recently happened to my nhs trust is happening to yours. its absolutly disgusting that the government is turning a blind eye and not taking the responsibility of years of nhs missmanagement. 200 jobs went at our trust recently and only last week they were advertising for a new head of HR on around 70,000. its apauling. many student nurses are leaving without jobs which is just awful. its not like you come out with a degree in business and have to take management in tescos as a last resort. What can you do with a degree in nursing? rant over lol

Annonymous
Hi there. I'm a student nurse in the Nottingham Univeristy Hospitals NHS Trust in Nottingham. I am a first year student but I originate from Yorkshire. I think the job cuts are going to cause devistation in Yorkshire and that there must be another way of balancing the books. Cutting this number of jobs (weather front line staff or not) is going to cause patient care to suffer dramatically. As a student Nurse, I am very worried about being able to get a job when I qualifiy. I know that many of my fellow studnts feel the same way. The NHS cannot, and must not, continue to cut jobs in this way.

Paul Needs
This highlights the risk in attempting to run NHS Trusts like businesses.Where individual units within the trusts have to 'charge' other units for their services is ludicrous.

Jane Mosley
I hope it is the managers that are losing their jobs? If they reduce their massive salaries and run the NHS an as effective business this should NOT happen.Why on earth do they overspend in the first place?