NHS Wiltshire board members last week expressed concern about the speed of the change they are expected to oversee as services are hived off to other trusts.

The PCT is required to comply with a Labour Government directive from January last year that it is no longer the provider of health services by autumn 2011.

Alison Knowles, the PCT’s director of strategy and communications, told the board meeting at Southgate House in Devizes that they had been in discussion with other trusts over the past 18 months to see who would take over which services.

But Christine Reid was one of several non-executive directors concerned at the speed of the process.

She said: “We have developed some very robust tendering processes over the years and now we are being forced to deal extremely quickly without the benefit of lengthy and detailed tendering. This is very unsatisfactory.”

Another non-executive director, John Holden, said: “I support this paper with a heavy heart. None of the trusts we deal with is pan-Wiltshire so it is going to be a real challenge.”

Under Coalition Government plans, NHS Wiltshire is due to disappear entirely over the next few years. But it still has to find savings of over £15million over the next three years.

Among the possible strategies are cutting the costs of drug prescribing, and helping people with mental health problems live in the community avoiding unnecessary hospital admissions.