CUTTING hundreds of jobs at Colchester General Hospital will help it raise almost half of the £15million savings it needs to find next year.

Dr Lucy Moore, chief executive of Colchester Hospital University NHS Foundation Trust, yesterday blamed costly changes in management and much-needed investment to raise quality and safety at the hospital for its financial black hole.

The trust needs to save £15million in the next financial year.

Dr Moore revealed in a staff email last week it would be axing 240 jobs from IT, human resources and finance by March 31, 2016, giving it a yearly saving of £7million.

But no further details have yet been given as to where the other £8million will come from.

Dr Moore said: “We are looking at a whole range of things.

“Really what we are doing is trying to reduce the price of things as well as looking at how much of certain things we use.”

She added: “We have had to make significant investment in quality and safety concerns, particularly in raising levels of clinical staff and it is one of the reasons for there being such a big financial change.

“But there has also been quite a lot of change at leadership level.

“These aren’t recurrent costs though and they will come down.”

No frontline roles, such as doctors and nurses, will face the axe in the savings plan.

The trust has admitted it will also be looking to make money in future by treating patients from outside of north east Essex, such as Suffolk, instead of passing the workload on to other hospitals.

It means it will be given funds for treating them.

The full details of the savings blueprint will be revealed next month when it is sent to health regulator Monitor.