Leaders at Bury Hospice have laid bare its current financial situation in a bid to get the charity back on its feet and secure its future.

Newly-appointed chairman of trustees, Colin Green, and the hospice’s board of trustees have hit out at critics by releasing an open letter.

The letter has been put on the hospice website and a copy also sent to the Bury Times and Radcliffe Times.

The trustees said they were “saddened” by accusations bosses have something to hide following the hospice’s recent widely-publicised financial struggles.

In the letter, the board claim making redundancies and reducing services was necessary to protect the hospice from the threat of closure.

The letter also claims Bury Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) exacerbated financial difficulties by encouraging the move to the new £5.05 million building in Rochdale Old Road last March on the promise of more funding, which never materialised.

It stated: “While based in Dumers Lane, where NHS funding provided 15 per cent of our running costs, we were approached by local medical professionals to provide more beds to meet the increasing demand for our excellent palliative care.

“The decision was made to build a new hospice, using the funds from a large legacy we received in 2008 along with additional money raised through an appeal and a suitable site on Rochdale Old Road for a 12-bed hospice was identified.

“We were actively encouraged by the local NHS authority to embark on the project to build a new hospice, with the indication it would increase the level of their funding commensurately with the increase in services and running costs.

“The new hospice was opened in March last year with staffing for eight beds plus day care and Hospice at Home services, based on projected funding from the CCG grant.

“Unfortunately, the CCG were unable to increase their level of grant as we had been led to understand they would.

“At the same time, the level of fundraising significantly dropped due to the recession. The result was that there was more cash being spent on a monthly basis than was coming in.”

In July, the Bury Times and Radcliffe Times reported the hospice was falling behind the £3 million a year needed to keep it running and could be at risk of closure.

The same month, whistleblowers revealed brand new bedrooms were lying empty and state-of-the-art clinic rooms being used for storage.

The letter continued: “Between last March and this March the hospice’s shortfall in funds was met by financial reserves.

“Despite continuing to discuss possible increases in the annual grant with the CCG, a focus on fundraising activities and a programme of cost reductions, we could not address the shortfall.

“It became clear that if we continued to use reserves at the rate we had in the last year, they would eventually be reduced to a level unacceptable to the auditors and the Charity Commission, and the hospice would be forced to close.

“With no guaranteed income improvement, trustees and management were faced with the regrettable necessity of reducing services in order to bring expenditure in line with income.

“The reduction was discussed with the CCG and it offered the hospice an additional single grant of £124,000 based on us taking steps to balance expenditure and income.

“The level of services affordable to achieve this unfortunately required that there would have to be staff redundancies. This was not a decision taken lightly.”

Stuart North, Chief Officer for the CCG said: “In recognition of the vital services it provides, a one-off financial allocation was agreed by the CCG to support the Hospice to maintain some services until the end of the financial year.

"In the meantime, our clinicians are reviewing the end of life care pathway as a whole to best meet the needs of local people, this work will be discussed in more detail at our regular board meeting in the near future, at which point we will be reviewing our investment into Bury Hospice.”

It is understood NHS Bury CCG was not involved in any discussions around the commissioning of the new hospice or its future funding requirements because it was only established in April 2013, replacing Bury Primary Care Trust.