£8m of taxpayers cash spent on health bosses pay-offs (From Daily Echo)

120 Hampshire health bosses get redundancy settlements averaging £69,500

5:30pm Monday 6th April 2009 in Search

MORE than £8m of taxpayers’ money was spent on redundancies in a massive shake-up of health services across Hampshire, the Daily Echo can reveal.

Around 120 senior managers took golden handshakes when seven primary care trusts were merged into one.

One took as much as £130,000 to leave the NHS.

Hampshire MPs have criticised the huge cost of the redundancies but health officials say long-term savings have been made with reduced management costs.

The Daily Echo obtained the figures from Hampshire Primary Care Trust using the Freedom of Information Act.

But health bosses refused to say how many of staff given redundancy pay-offs went on to be re-employed within the NHS.

Primary care trusts were established in 2002 to provide community health services such as GP surgeries and district nurses.

But only four years after they were set-up, ministers announced a major reorganisation.

Six chief executives and directors, 24 heads of service, 59 managers and 31 administrators were made redundant or took early retirement as a result of the reorganisation at a cost of £8.34m over the past two years.

That would be enough to pay for 1,091 heart bypasses, or 1,097 hip replacements, or 1,137 knee replacements, or 7,765 varicose vein procedures.