NHS trusts have been asked to make extreme cuts as the service faces a predicted shortage of nearly ₤ 7 billion, health leaders cautioned today.

In a study for NHS Providers, 47 per cent of trust leaders warned they are rolling back services to balance the books, while another 43 percent are thinking about doing so.

Rehabilitation centres, talking therapies and diabetes services for youths are amongst at risk.

Eighty-six percent of participants said their organisation is having to cut tasks in non-clinical teams, while 37 percent plan to cut scientific posts.

A number of trusts are aiming to cut 500 tasks or more, with one preparation as lots of as 1,000.

NHS union Unison's head of health Helga Pile stated: "Ministers should not be insisting trusts stabilize their books while disregarding the destructive effects for client care and a demoralised labor force.

"The NHS needs more personnel - not less workers - if hold-ups and waits for patients are to end."

It comes as NHS chief executive Sir Jim Mackey told a Medical Journalists Association occasion in London the service had "maxed out on what is inexpensive."

He stated that the NHS was likely to have a ₤ 6.6 bn deficit this year, regardless of a spending plan of around ₤ 200bn.

Though he has actually demanded unmatched savings, he knocked the "normalisation" of poor care, stating that, 10 years earlier, "we would have never ever accepted old women being on passages next to an [A&E] department for hours on end."

We Own It creator and director Cat Hobbs stated: "Back in 2012, the NHS was rated as the very best health care service in the world.

"That was before the legislation that deliberately opened our whole NHS to profiteering.

"Sir Jim Mackey is definitely right to state that patients being treated in passages and parking area is inappropriate. If he wishes to stop this scandal while conserving cash, he must end privatisation as rapidly as possible.