Hundreds of NHS staff face redundancy to cut costs

Up to 200 people face being made redundant as an NHS board attempts to halve its costs.

The move would affect administrative staff at NHS Herefordshire and Worcestershire Integrated Care Board (ICB), which has a budget of £2.2bn and commissions healthcare services across the two counties.

Chief executive Simon Trickett, said this would free up £23m to re-invest in frontline healthcare and could see the board merging with its counterpart in Warwickshire.

ICBs have been set a target of halving their costs by the government, as part of wide-ranging health reforms that will also see the abolition of NHS England which, in March, Health Secretary Wes Streeting said would take place within two years.

Most ICBs are expected to reduce their costs by merging with a neighbouring health board, which in this case is Coventry and Warwickshire ICB (CW), although there is no immediate plan for this to take place.

"We are now in the midst of a re-organisation of how the management of integrated care boards work," said Mr Trickett.

"We won't merge ICBs but we will share management and leadership capacity and have one team running two ICBs – Herefordshire and Worcestershire ICB and Coventry and Warwickshire ICB.

"The net result of that will be a 50% reduction in running costs – that equates to £23m. This is a lot of money taken out of management to be available to put into frontline care."

Addressing Worcestershire County Council's health and wellbeing board on Tuesday, he said it would likely result in between 150 and 200 redundancies out of the estimated 250 people directly employed by the ICB.

Mr Trickett described the deal with CW as "an interim arrangement that can allow the savings to be delivered".

However, he said there would be no merger with that board at this stage because the government wanted health boards to align with strategic mayoral authorities.

Some savings would be made by not having to service NHS England's infrastructure, Mr Trickett added.

He said the role of the board was also changing, with staff being asked to be less "hands-on" as it becomes a more strategic commissioner.

"The NHS in this part of the country is far from perfect, but we have made some good progress," Mr Trickett said. "We want to continue that.

"I won't be willing to compromise things that make a difference for patients, to hit this target."

This news was gathered by the Local Democracy Reporting Service, which covers councils and other public service organisations.

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