AROUND 30 NHS staff are set to lose their jobs in a radical shake-up of local health services.

Managers and workers of fundholding GP practices are being made redundant as surgeries are taken over by new primary care groups run by doctors and community nurses.

Now union chiefs are threatening to bring cases for unfair dismissal.

Peter Atkinson, spokesman for Unison's Worthing Priority Health Care NHS Trust branch, said: "We feel that staff weren't given all the opportunities they could have been to apply for alternative posts in the NHS."

But East Sussex, Brighton and Hove Health Authority spokeswoman Maddie Mayhew said all the unions had been invited to talks but the local UNISON branch had failed to turn up.

While 16 staff from fundholding practices had been made redundant, it was thought only "a small number" of others would follow from the health authority itself.

West Sussex Health Authority human resources director Brian Hughes added: "We are expecting ten or 12 people at the most to have been made redundant."

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