Your article on the £5.4 million overspend by Epsom and St Helier NHS Trust contained two small but highly significant points.

Firstly, who was the idiot in the trust finance department who authorised a budget of only £84,000 for the use of agency nurses throughout the trust for a year? That figure just about covers the cost of two such nurses during the budget year.

Secondly, where does Unison get off when its local representative suggests the workforce and management should club together after decades of under-investment?

To see Unison now don an honest broker disguise in trying to sort out the NHS ills does not sit well with those of us who recall what the NHS was before it began to suffer the depredations caused by the forerunners of Unison COHSE etc culminating in the infamous winter of discontent which brought down the Callaghan government.

And what does the sort of anodyne claptrap Unison now puts forward have to do with setting a proper budget and managing the finances accordingly.

The problem with Epsom and St Helier NHS Trust is mismanagement, pure and simple and that extends throughout the organisation.

This is not about medical treatment or nursing care, just managerial ability or the lack of it.

How many nurses would the overspent £3.5 million have recruited, trained and put to work?

The management responsible for this debacle should be dismissed forthwith. Not retired, not transferred, but dismissed for sheer negligence or a complete lack of ability to do the work they are very well paid to do.

DAVID PATRICK

Larkspur Way

Epsom