NHS reorganisation will cost the health service more than £37million, say critics.

And redundancies at East Lancashire and Blackburn with Darwen primary care trusts, for 2010-11 alone, left the organisations with a £3.56million bill.

These are the findings of a survey by Labour, ahead of the goverment’s controversial Health Bill becoming law.

Redundancy costs for East Lancashire are said to be £2.26million and in Blackburn the figure is £1.29million.

Under Whitehall proposals, PCTs are set to be scrapped next year, with clinical commissioning groups in their place, controlled by GPs.

This would increase the number of administrative bodies in East Lancashire from two to at least six.

Andy Burnham, Shadow Health Secretary, said: “People will want to know why the NHS is being forced to waste millions on redundancy payouts, only for many of the same staff to be re-employed in the new NHS organisations.

“This is only the first wave of redundancies.”

- more are expected later this year and next as part of the Government’s reckless NHS re-organisation that will cost more than a half billion pounds in the north west alone.”

The current NHS reorganisation is just the latest in a series of overhauls by successive governments, over the past 20 years.