By Marjory Inglis, health reporter

NHS TAYSIDE is looking to shed 200 jobs from the pay roll in a bid to balance the books.

Last night the organisation’s director of human resources Alan Boyter said NHS Tayside made no apology for trying to live within their means.

In recent years NHS Tayside has employed more nurses, more doctors and more managers and now employs around 14,000 people locally. But population changes as much as financial curbs are signalling an end to the spiral.

Earlier this year NHS Tayside chiefs were told they would get an extra £39 million to spend on health in the region this year. However, due to the impact of doctors’ pay deals and other pressures on the budget, the organisation was looking to find £17.5 million of savings if it is to stay in the black this year.

A vacancy control panel has been introduced that is scrutinising every job that becomes vacant and deciding whether the post is really necessary or if the job could be done differently. The NHS both locally and nationally are involved in major programmes to redesign the way services are delivered, trying to modernise services and face up to population changes that will see a shrinking pool of young workers in future and an increasing number of elderly people with complex healthcare needs.

NHS Tayside is attempting to tackle the immediate problem of balancing the books, while at the same time looking ahead to the demands of the future.

Later this week Mr Boyter will present health chiefs with a visionary approach to NHS Tayside’s workforce planning, looking at ways of addressing the recruitment time bomb. Health chiefs have been told previously that a quarter of the workforce are over 50 and that the falling birth rate will mean employers competing for a shrinking pool of workers in a few years time.

But while looking ahead to avert a future recruitment crisis, Mr Boyter did not dispute his organisation was looking to shed 200 posts, though he explained that not all these jobs would literally disappear. For example 64 nursing staff have been transferred to cancer charity Marie Curie.

He said NHS Tayside’s staff turnover of 11.5% a year, meant that around 1400 were recruited. Two hundred posts was a “small percentage” of that total.