NHS chiefs were due today to announce plans to cut 130 beds across Oxfordshire's major hospitals in a bid to stave off predicted £33m debts.

At a board meeting this morning, Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals NHS Trust managers were expected to agree a range of cost-cutting measures, including the loss of 600 posts at Oxford's John Radcliffe Hospital, Churchill Hospital, and Radcliffe Infirmary, and the Horton, Banbury.

The proposals include general medicine and geratology bed closures at the JR, surgical bed reductions at the Churchill, fewer specialist beds at the RI, and axing the Horton's paediatric inpatient services, obstetrics and emergency out-of-hours surgery.

ORH chief executive Trevor Campbell Davis warned patient services were likely to suffer because of the plans, as the trust had worked hard in recent years to be efficient, but he added that major changes would require a three-month public consultation.

He said: "I'm feeling reassured that it's now been demonstrated independently that we're one of the best trusts in the country, which provides me with considerable satisfaction that the work we've done in the past has worked well.

"I'm now trying to find the right way to make these reductions. You can take an inefficient organisation and make it efficient without too much impact on patient services, but it's much more difficult to do that with an organisation that's already efficient."

As reported in the Oxford Mail last week, Mr Campbell Davis confirmed 600 posts were due to be axed as part of the savings, leading to an eight per cent reduction in the trust's 1,600 beds.

About 40 per cent of the jobs lost will be managerial and administration, 35 per cent will affect nursing staff, five per cent will be medical positions and just under 15 per cent will be health workers, like scientists and therapists.

Fewer than half are likely to be compulsory redundancies, and those that are will be subject to a 90-day consultation period.

Instead, the trust hopes to reduce its 10,000-strong workforce through vacancy freezes and cuts in agency staff. Unison regional officer Kelvin Oubrey said: "The Government's insistence in bringing the NHS into financial balance in one year is what's causing the immediate problem facing us."