NHS savings of £539 million are to be made across Birmingham and Solihull over five years, health bosses have revealed.

Cuts are planned in ten areas including mental health, maternity and dementia services and end of life care, said Denise McLellan, chief executive of Birmingham and Solihull Primary Care Trusts cluster.

She said they were anticipating an increase in demand on services and had created an ‘efficiency plan’ to ensure services cope, despite the Government refusing to give extra cash.

But Coun Tony Kennedy, city health scrutiny member, said he was sceptical of the move.

“There are a lot of initiatives and reduced dependency on hospital beds already,” said Coun Kennedy (Lab, Sparkbrook).

“The health secretary has said there needs to be a £20 billion cut across the country, so I worry the NHS will be driven to do more arbitrary cuts in the future.”

Miss McLellan said the gap between funding and patient demand by 2015 is predicted as being £539 million.

Disinvestment in services, changes to the way services are run and a strategy transformation would be ways of saving the cash, she added.