Half of NHS England's 13,000 staff face the axe in shake-up

NHS England is set to lose half its staff and a huge swathe of its senior management team in a brutal restructuring under a new boss.

- Denis Campbell

The workforce will shrink from 13,000 to about 6,500 as entire teams are axed to save money and avoid "duplication" with officials at the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC).

Staff said they were "in shock and awe" at the scale of the job cuts, which go far beyond the loss of 2,000 posts that was announced just weeks ago to save £175m.

The DHSC will also become smaller as a result of a process that will see it working much more closely from next month with NHS England. It will shed far fewer staff than the latter.

The changes will give Wes Streeting, the health secretary, more control over an organisation responsible for the operational performance of the health service in England.

"These changes represent the biggest reshaping of the NHS's national architecture in more than a decade," said Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, which represents health trusts in England.