NHS Wiltshire’s chief executive Jeff James has pledged that services in the county’s community hospitals will remain the same when they are transferred to new organisations.

The Government’s radical shake-up of the NHS, announced on Monday, means that from April 1 2011 NHS Wiltshire will no longer run community hospitals.

NHS Wiltshire, along with other Primary Care Trusts, will be abolished in April 2013 and GP consortia will have the responsibility of buying health services for patients.

All NHS Wiltshire’s 1,900 frontline health staff, including those who work at the community hospitals and Neighbourhood Teams, will transfer to new employers next April.

Organisations will bid to run the community hospitals and the other services NHS Wiltshire provides. The organisations could range from private healthcare companies, neighbouring hospitals such as the Royal United at Bath, Great Western at Swindon and at Salisbury, to social enterprises.

NHS Wiltshire runs community hospitals in Devizes, Marlborough, Trowbridge, Chippenham, Melksham and Warminster.

Asked if the community hospitals will remain open and provide the same services as they do now when they have transferred next April, Mr James replied: “As far as anything is guaranteed, yes. We have no plans to change the services at community hospitals.”

He said if the new organisations that take over the community hospitals wanted to change services, they would need agreement from NHS Wiltshire and GP consortia, which will have begun working in shadow form.

Mr James said NHS Wiltshire will continue with plans to create Primary Care Centres to replace the community hospitals in Devizes and Trowbridge. Both projects are led by local GPs.

He said: “We are proceeding with these projects as we set out to do. We will try our very best to do them because that’s the right thing to do.”

The Government’s changes to the NHS involve reducing management costs by 45 per cent over the next four years. In 2009/10 NHS Wiltshire spent £10.1 million on management costs, equating to £25.85 per head of population. It currently employs 120 senior managers.

Mr James said he did not know how many managers were at risk of redundancy.

He said: “We have been reducing management costs at NHS Wiltshire for the past two years by losing posts when people retire or leave. We will carry on doing that to try to avoid redundancy but it’s not clear if we can sustain that on a no redundancy basis.”

Union official Roger Davey, senior steward of Unison in Wiltshire, said: “I think there’s a major doubt about community hospitals and the services they provide under these changes. The RUH want to bring back services from community hospitals, such as outpatient clinics, to the RUH. “We don’t know where GPs will buy services from and once staff are transferred to the private sector they are extremely vulnerable.”

* The next board meeting, in public, of NHS Wiltshire is on Wednesday at 10am at Southgate House, Pans Lane, Devizes.