A PRIVATE firm that controversially took over health services in North-East prisons from NHS trusts is cutting 21 jobs.

Eighteen nursing-related posts are being lost on a voluntarily basis, while three administrative staff have been made compulsorily redundant by Care UK.

Some remaining staff have had their jobs downgraded.

The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) said the numbers were significantly lower than the 116 employees who were originally placed at risk of redundancy.

Care UK took over responsibility for prison healthcare in April after it was awarded a £53m contract to provide services to 5,000 inmates at prison and young offender institutions in the region.

After announcing possible redundancies, it said the economies of scale offered by running all of the prison health care operations together, along with the advent of new technology and innovative ways of working, allowed for efficiencies to be made.

Jake Turnbull, a regional spokesman for the RCN, said it and other trade unions involved had taken a tough principled stance and were not prepared to see clinical quality compromised.

He said: “The challenge now is to see how the clinical skills mix is maintained over time, and whether existing capacity is sufficient for a growing number of more challenging patients in the prisons system.

“A number of remaining staff have also seen their positions downgraded, which has obviously had a damaging effect on staff morale.

“But we remain committed to working with management to resolve any outstanding issues.”

A Care UK spokeswoman said it was always the intention that the final number of redundancies would be considerably lower than the number of people it was required to place at risk.

She said: “We listened carefully to the views of staff and are redesigning the way that the service is delivered based on that feedback and our experience of providing prison healthcare elsewhere.

“As part of that process, a number of staff decided to take advantage of the voluntary redundancy package on offer.

“There will be no redundancies for clinical staff and only one or two redundancies among administrative staff.

“Our focus has always been on delivering a good quality front-line service whilst ensuring greater fairness and consistency of provision across the seven prisons.

“Staff who have been re-deployed into jobs at a lower grade have had their salaries protected for up to six years in line with their NHS contracts.”