NURSING and other care services are expected to be hit by severe job cuts to help fill a £15m hole in healthcare finances.

School nurses, district nurses, community nurses, speech and language therapists, occupational therapists, chiropodists and health visitors are all under threat.

Staff have heard rumours that as much as £1m savings must be found from nursing alone.

And Waltham Forest Primary Care Trust has told the Guardian that it is looking at ways of saving £6m overall.

Healthcare union Amicus's staff side secretary, Ruth Robinson, said that there was panic among staff.

"It has been presented to us that this is the situation and we have got to do something about it," she said.

She said that the director of Waltham Forest Primary Care Trust (PCT) was working with unions to collect information and an announcement on job and service cuts was expected at the end of the month.

A PCT spokeswoman confirmed that the trust was £15m in the red, a situation exacerbated by a Government order for all London PCTs to put three per cent of their budgets into a central fund.

For Waltham Forest PCT this amounted to £9m.

The spokeswoman added: "We are looking again at our plans to see how we can save money in order to end the year in financial balance.

"The board is considering a package of measures, including looking at different ways of doing things that achieve the same benefit for patients at less cost, delaying non-essential developments, better management of care pathways and a cost improvement plan of £6 million.

"We will consult on any impact these measures will have on staffing."

One Waltham Forest nurse, who did not want to be named, said that people's health will suffer if cuts are made.

She added: "The effects it could have on the borough are far reaching. We already have among the highest death rates in London and the UK for babies and heart disease.

"The nurses in Waltham Forest work on preventative measures and do a huge amount of work to try and improve the health of residents."

Ms Robinson said that the possible cuts were part of a funding crisis hitting the NHS as a whole.

She added: "Everyone working in the NHS needs to be worried and that doesn't just mean if you are providing care directly admin staff, managerial staff, everyone has got the threat of job losses."