STAFF at a Merseyside hospital will be balloted to see if they want to go on strike.

Unions at Wirral University Teaching Hospital, which includes Arrowe Park and Clatterbridge, are rowing with managers over how cuts are being brought in.

They lodged an official joint grievance with the NHS trust’s human resources director on November 11.

In it, they complained trust managers were not consulting with staff before implementing cuts.

But they apparently did not receive a response.

At a joint meeting of the unions on Wednesday, they decided to escalate the row and chose to have an “indicative ballot” for industrial action, which could be the first step on the road to coming out on strike.

As the Daily Post revealed on Wednesday, the trust will have to make nearly £42m of cuts within three years.

Some of the cuts already announced are to close one Clatterbridge Hospital ward and axe 10 beds from another there. Staff shift patterns have also been changed in a bid to save cash.

Hospital bosses are also looking at the future of the entire Clatterbridge site. Three proposals were mooted, one of which includes using the hospital for outpatient appointments only.

The two other options for the site, which are due to form part of a consultation at the start of next year, are to treat only day cases, in which a patient is operated on and discharged the same day, or to leave it as is.