THE Royal College of Nursing (RCN) has said it is alarmed at the speed at which job cuts are to be made in the North- East NHS.

The NHS in the North-East has been ordered to make savings of £800m by 2014.

One of the main areas of cost-cutting will be in primary care trusts, which are due to be scrapped by 2013.

But the RCN, which has thousands of members in the North-East, said it understood that the first redundancies would begin on Teesside as early as October 11.

Details of the timetable of redundancies at three primary care trusts have been obtained by the union.

They state that up to 82 jobs will go from NHS Middlesbrough, 80 from NHS Stockton and five from NHS Hartlepool.

A spokesman said: “We knew that NHS trusts were planning significant cuts but the timelines here for redundancies are a lot sooner than many people perhaps realise.

“We are talking about a matter of weeks before the first redundancies occur.

“And while we fully appreciate that trusts have to deliver the cost efficiencies that are being demanded of them, the speed with which these cuts are being delivered are sure to cause alarm.”

He added: “The Government says that these cuts are being made so that the money can be ploughed back into frontline services.

“The question we are asking is – where exactly is the money going?

“We need to see the evidence that the money being saved is going back to the frontline, but so far we do not have that information.”