Hundreds of hospital jobs are being axed in a bid to halt the spiralling debt crisis in the NHS.

Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust is cutting 325 posts - more than seven per cent of its workforce - as part of plans to save more than £10 million over the next year.

The trust, which runs the Royal Sussex County Hospital, the Sussex Eye Hospital and the Royal Alexandra Hospital for Sick Children in Brighton and the Princess Royal Hospital and Hurstwood Park Neurosciences Centre in Haywards Heath, is £11.3 million in the red.

The figure would have been more than £21 million but the trust was given an extra £10 million from the Surrey and Sussex Strategic Health Authority to cover the overspend.

Details of departments affected by job losses have not emerged but they are expected to include administrative and secretarial posts.

Trust chief executive Peter Coles told a board meeting yesterday there were likely to be some redundancies but he hoped most job losses would come through natural turnover, early retirement and voluntary redundancies.

The job losses are a part of wider plans by the trust to get its finances under control which could lead to changes in where patients are treated and the services the hospital provides.

There are more than 4,500 workers employed at the trust and managers were holding staff meetings yesterday and other are planned this week to explain the proposals. The trust is one of three in the county to have a team of troubleshooters sent in by the Government to get its approximate £300 million annual budget and finances under control.

The so-called Turnaround team has been studying ways to make the trust run more efficiently.

Turnaround director Simon Payler told board members yesterday that at the moment the trust was overspending by £1 million a month and this needed to be brought under control as soon as possible.

He said: "We have been unable to secure savings through efficiency measures alone and that means we need to look at all areas of the trust to make sure everything is being used to its full capacity.

"There will be difficult decisions that will need to be made relating to the provision of services across the organisation and some services may change."

A spokesman for Unison said: "Staff have been aware that this is on the cards for some time, especially as this has been happening at other trusts around the country.

"It is a very difficult time and we will be doing everything we can to support our members."

The news has raised fears that other trusts in Sussex with similar financial pressures will follow suit and announce job losses in the near future.

They include Surrey and Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust, which runs Crawley Hospital and East Surrey Hospital in Redhill and has a debt of more than £50 million, one of the highest in England.

The Royal West Sussex NHS Trust, which runs St Richard's Hospital in Chichester, is also more than £20 million in the red.

The NHS has escalated in Sussex over recent years with hospitals treating more patients than ever before but not getting the funding to match it.

Cost-cutting measures have already including not filling vacant posts, cutting down on expensive agency staff, cutting back on operations and having fewer outpatient appointments.

The Government is concentrating on investing more in community health services and providing treatments and tests closer to home.

Pressure group Health Emergency has already forecast a fresh wave of redundancies at NHS hospitals as trusts work to balance their books for the end of the financial year.

More than 2,000 jobs have already been shed by hospitals in areas including Stoke-on-Trent, Durham, Kent, Plymouth and north London.

Critics say the constant reorganisation of the NHS over recent years has destabilised it and demoralised staff.