News / NHS
400 redundancies expected amid 50% cut
Four hundred people who work in non-clinical roles across two major NHS bodies in Gloucestershire, Bristol and part of Somerset are expected to lose their jobs in a major spending cut ordered by the government.
Integrated care boards (ICBs) have been given two months by NHS England to draw up a plan to cut their running costs by 50 per cent.
The boards replaced clinical commissioning groups in 2022 and are responsible for understanding the population needs in their area and planning and commissioning the NHS services required.
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The Bristol, North Somerset & South Gloucestershire (BNSSG) board commissions £3.2bn of NHS spending. It has not been told to cut this funding but to cut the £33m running costs of the ICB as an organisation.
BNSSG ICB chief executive Shane Devlin said: “Why would we shave money off the £33m if it’s going to have a detrimental impact on £3.2bn of services? So we have to try and find that balance…
“We have to take a pragmatic approach to this. We could reduce the cost of the ICB by a few million and as a result cause £20m or £30m of consequence. We don’t want to do that.”
Devlin was speaking at a meeting of the health overview and scrutiny committees of Bristol City Council, North Somerset Council and South Gloucestershire Council held at Bristol’s City Hall.
He warned that it would not be possible to reduce running costs by 50 per cent without cutting some of the organisation’s 450 staff.
At the same time as being told to cut costs in half, NHS England has told ICBs to change their role to become ‘strategic commissioners’ responsible for turning the population’s needs into a strategy, commission for those needs and measure whether it is making a difference in addressing them.
Devlin said: “You also cannot deliver a new function if you have stripped your organisation by 50 per cent.”
He said that the ICB was looking at a merger with the Gloucestershire ICB in order to reduce running costs and deliver the new strategic commissioner functions without “collapsing the organisation.”
But he warned: “That will mean across BNSSG and Gloucestershire, we are probably looking at about 400 redundancies out of a workforce of about 800 people and that is a massive impact on the individuals, their families, their ability to survive in today’s climate – and across the NHS as a whole that will be many thousands.”
Devlin added: “We feel devastated by what we are being asked to do.”
The cut is on top of a 30 per cent cut ICBs were told to deliver in 2023. Papers for the meeting said BNSSG had been given £12.6m as an indicative figure of what it needed to cut.
Chairing the meeting, Bristol councillor Tim Wye said: “I think we would all note and have sympathy for the human cost of this… That is a lot of people losing their jobs in our local area.”
The ICB has been told to deliver its plan to NHS England by 10am on Tuesday. Devlin said: “We have been working night and day on this.”
It needs to deliver its cut in running costs by the end of quarter three, and to have changed to a strategic commissioner by April 1 2026.
Main photo: NHS
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