NHS trusts share bosses to help save £48 million

Eight London NHS trusts are to share chief executives in a bid to save millions in management costs.

The move means five health bosses currently employed by the primary care trusts will be axed in a £48 million cost-cutting measure.

The PCTs which have agreed to the effective merger are Hammersmith & Fulham, Kensington and Chelsea, Westminster, Ealing, Hillingdon, Hounslow, Brent and Harrow. All are under pressure to make huge savings.

The management-sharing proposal will be welcomed by health campaigners who have criticised the amount spent by the NHS on hiring bureaucrats at the expense of patient care.

Trust executives are among the highest paid public sector employees, with many earning more than the prime minister.

NHS Hillingdon's chief executive Professor Yi Mien Koh is on a £137,500 pay scale and Nick Relph, the head of Hounslow PCT, is on an annual salary in the £202,500 band.

NHS London, the strategic health authority, is already understood to have held talks about merging all 31 PCTs in the capital into six organisations.

According to Health Service Journal, the merger plans involve the eight trusts being grouped together in three clusters.

Brent and Harrow will team up, then Ealing, Hillingdon and Hounslow. The final group will be formed of the three central London PCTs.

Each cluster will have a shared management team and one chief executive who will sit on an overall executive committee.

The mergers would reduce management costs for commissioning from £71.4 million to £23.7 million by 2013.

The current head of NHS Brent, Mark Easton, is already interim chief executive of neighbouring NHS Harrow.

Geoff Alltimes is also currently joint chief executive of Hammersmith & Fulham PCT and its local authority.

The reorganisation of senior management is expected to be completed by the end of March, with cluster executive teams appointed by the end of this December. A staff consultation is expected to begin next month.

NHS London confirmed the day-to-day running of the PCTs would be carried out through their clusters.

But it said the eight bodies would effectively still exist, although some compulsory redundancies were "anticipated".