The moves are being made as the trust seeks to break even by the next financial year.

Hannah Coffey, chief executive of North West Anglia NHS Foundation Trust, said: ‘Following successful recruitment drives in recent years, we have been able to reduce our vacancy rate across our hospitals. This is helping us to meet the national requirement to reduce the use of bank and agency staff.

‘In line with other NHS provider organisations, we are also required to reduce corporate cost growth by 50% since 2018/19. We are agreeing a plan to deliver this requirement and are committed to doing so in an open and transparent way with our colleagues. We recognise the impact this may have, and we are committed to supporting staff members through these changes.'

The annual plan includes a 6.4% cost reduction in elective activity.

Cuts to staff numbers will be focused on infrastructure support staff and corporate and non-patient facing clinical staff to meet the requirement to reduce NHS infrastructure support staff by 50% of growth between March 2020 and March 2025.

The trust said 15% of savings would be redirected to frontline clinical staff.

In addition, cuts of 27% and 34% have been factored in for bank and agency staff, respectively.

It has been estimated that over 100 redundancies could be made.

Unison Eastern regional organiser Rad Kerrigan said: ‘Across North West Anglia Hospitals, all staff are playing an important role in tackling waiting lists and providing quality care to patients. The loss of more than 100 staff is bound to make that harder.

‘The trust is taking a measured approach to the cuts, and trying hard to avoid redundancies, but vacancy freezes and other measures to reduce costs will still pile the pressure on frontline staff.

‘The NHS needs real investment in staff to face up to the challenges ahead — job cuts simply aren't the way to go.'