A MAJOR staff shake-up is underway at the Royal Bournemouth Hospital leading to the loss of several senior managers.

The staff restructuring follows a damning report by the Care Quality Commission last December, which criticised management and leadership of the hospital.

The report said: “We found the trust overall was not ensuring effective leadership and governance across the hospital.”

Around six or seven of the hospital’s senior or middle managers in key areas such as surgical services and theatre, are now believed to have lost their jobs.

Some may be relocated to other departments while others are likely to be offered redundancy packages.

One source who didn’t want to be identified told the Echo that there were originally eight posts up for grabs, which were then reduced to three.

However after all the interviews were conducted, only one person got a job.

They were all highly experienced, according to the source, and there are fears that their loss will have an impact on the frontline.

A spokesman for the trust said it couldn’t comment on individual members of staff or what was an ongoing internal process. The Royal Bournemouth was one of the first hospitals to be assessed at the end of last year under the new regime in the wake of the Mid Staffs scandal.

In the view of some patients and staff at the time, the report was an indictment of the management and leadership of RBH.

Inspectors are due to return to the hospital for an unannounced, follow-up inspection sometime shortly.

The hospital trust’s board of directors were due to meet at the Royal Bournemouth last Friday, May 9.

Items on the agenda included an update on the CQC action plan and improvements to the board.