Beleaguered Winchester health chiefs have warned job losses could be on the cards as they battle to deal with a financial crisis.

Only a quarter through the financial year, they have admitted that a recovery plan to save £13.1m is unrealistic and predict they will fall short of that figure by £4.5m by the end of the year.

The admissions were made at a board meeting of the Winchester and Eastleigh Healthcare NHS Trust on Wednesday. The news comes just days after health chiefs in Southampton announced almost 400 jobs will go and two wards will close as they struggle to make cuts of £15m.

A raft of draconian measures being introduced in Winchester to try to halt the looming disaster include:

* Looking to axe at least 100 posts across the NHS trust area to save £2m per year. Managers are being asked to identify how this could be achieved;

* A six-week freeze on recruitment from August 1st;

* Recruitment of advertised posts will continue, but starts will be delayed;

* Attendance at courses and conferences will be suspended;

* A freeze on all non-essential equipment, such as computers and furniture;

* Each division to produce a report detailing where money can be saved.

Winchester and Eastleigh Healthcare NHS Trust employs around 3,000 and news of job cuts has stunned workers.

Doug Smith, trade union spokesman at the Royal Hampshire County Hospital, said: "It came as a bolt out of the blue. No-one had spoken about 100 jobs going before. Our concern is that they indicated there could be redundancies. This is just another nail in the coffin for us."

Rod Halls, chief executive, said: "This is not something we do lightly, but the view of the executive is that it's better to do something now than to do something far worse much later."

Lynda Banister, non-executive director, said: "We can't pretend it might not mean something to our services. We will do our best to maintain our services, but the reality is that this is going to cut hard."

Deputy finance director, Steve Gooch, said the main reason the trust would miss the target so spectacularly was because income from the sale of land would not be delivered this year.