Health bosses have spent at least £17.6m on management consultants to draw up plans that could lead to the closure or downgrading of NHS hospitals, new figures show.

Firms including KPMG, McKinsey and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) have made millions of pounds from the strategies, which earmark cuts to departments and some A&Es.

Sustainability and transformation plans (STPs) have been created in 44 regions in a bid to revolutionise services while saving money in the face of an expected £900m NHS deficit this year.

According to a Freedom of Information request from the Press Association, KPMG was paid more than £26,000 in Hertfordshire for 'cost modelling'.

Some of the biggest spends included south-west London, where bosses are reviewing services across five hospital sites.

Dr Mark Porter, chairman of the British Medical Association's council, said: 'It is outrageous that so much vital resource is being handed to consultancy firms for their part in delivering STPs which, ultimately, may never come to fruition.

"These figures are especially concerning given that everyone can see a huge crisis unfolding within our health service.

"The NHS is at breaking point, with record numbers of trusts and GP practices raising the alarm to say they already can't cope, and while frontline staff struggle to provide safe patient care in a service increasingly becoming unfit-for-purpose.

"NHS Improvement has already admitted that it will pick and choose the parts of the plans it can actually put into action, which leads me to question whether all of this money handed out to private companies will simply be completely wasted."

Janet Davies, chief executive of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN), added: "It is very hard to see how the Government can justify spending millions on management consultants, some of whom advise on cutting nursing staff to save money.

"This can become a false economy when the management consultants cost more than the savings they identify.

"It will be galling for nurses, who have suffered a 14 per cent cut in real terms, to hear these figures."

Unite national officer for health, Sarah Carpenter, said: "These findings reveal a management consultancy gravy train that is completely out-of-control, at a time when frontline services, such as A&E departments, are stretched to breaking point.

"What the public wants is more doctors, nurses and paramedics, not management 'whizz kids' brandishing flip-charts and PowerPoint presentations."