SIXTY-EIGHT staff were made redundant when the primary care trust was scrapped on April 1.

NHS South Essex ceased to exist and now four clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) run by GPs have taken over the role of buying primary care services.

A total of 445 staff were employed by the organisation and 68 were made redundant. The remainder were redeployed.

Andrew Pike, chief executive of NHS South Essex and now area director for Essex Area Team of NHS Commissioning Board, said: “We’ve done our best to minimise redundancies and it continued right up to March 31. Despite great personal uncertainty over the last 18 months staff have remained focussed and professional and I thank them for their hard work.”

Nick Bradley, Unison representative for Essex, said: “Across the country there have been several tens of thousands made redundant from the closure of PCTs.

“Any redundancy particularly in this present climate is absolutely awful. “People are going to find it so difficult to find alternative jobs as they have specialist health service roles.”

He added he didn’t see how replacing 220 PCTs and strategic health authorities with over 500 CCGs and new national organisations would save money.

Mr Bradley said: “They each have a chief executive, finance officer and other duplicate roles and resources to do the same job previously done by a smaller number of organisations. How can you save money by creating greater bureaucracy is beyond us.”

Workers were redeployed among the new Commissioning Board, the local CCGs and the majority to Commissioning Support Unit which provides services like procurement, HR, communications support to CCGs.

Other staff have gone to work with local authorities under public health, to NHS property services, Public Health England and Business Services Authority

A report to the PCT board said that those given redundancy were supported with career advice, CV preparation, advice on applying for roles and interview practise.