HOSPITAL bosses have been slammed after a job advert for a deputy chief executive appeared online two days after the Warrington Guardian revealed 200 jobs are being cut.

A bumper salary will be handed to the new director of finance and commercial development, including the role of deputy chief executive, which is expected to be in the region of six figures.

Hospital chiefs have said the move will mean one less executive post in the trust as the roles of the current director of finance, who leaves to join Alder Hey in May, and the director of corporate and commercial development, who leaves this month, are combined.

But Andy Rutherford, Unison regional organiser, has questioned whether the position is really needed.

He said: “We have been told they need to have that post in place but we don’t necessarily agree with that.

“In a time of redundancies they should be looking at and questioning every single post.

“Morale is rock bottom as everybody is working flat out and the job cuts and this role being advertised is just kicking them.

“It creates one rule for a few over the majority.”

Mr Rutherford added the deputy chief executive’s salary could be the equivalent of two or three nurses’ jobs or health care support workers.

The news follows the Warrington and Halton Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust announcing it had to save £11m in the next year but it was confident compulsory redundancies could be avoided.

One angry reader commented on our website: “Is the board of directors of the trust connected to the real world that the rest of us live in?

“What would we prefer; a new deputy CEO or some more nurses?”

Mel Pickup, chief executive of Warrington and Halton Hospitals, said: “The director of finance role is a statutory one that all hospitals must have in place so we have had to advertise at this time. However, we have reviewed our senior structure and will be reducing the executive team by not replacing another director post. When I spoke to staff last week around the national efficiency challenge that we are facing, I made it very clear that it is something that we are looking at across all areas. Reducing the executive posts is a clear demonstration of this and how can work to restructure when opportunities come up.”

Around 500 staff have attended open meetings with the senior team in the hospital in the last week.

Miss Pickup added: “Staff have been brilliant and we’ve seen over 250 ideas come in to our suggestions schemes around ways we can be more efficient to save money and protect posts.

!We’re looking at every single idea that comes from our staff, costing them up, and if they can work, we’ll put them in place.”