Job cuts from NHS restructure 'will be twice as big' as workers expected

The jobs cull from the government's radical restructuring of the NHS will be at least twice as big as previously thought, with other parts of the health service being downsized too.

- Denis Campbell

The staff shakeout caused by NHS England's abolition and unprecedented cost-cutting elsewhere will mean the number of lost posts will soar from the 10,000 expected to between 20,000 and 30,000.

Many thousands more personnel who work for the NHS's 42 integrated care boards (ICBs) in England will be axed, as well as the 10,000 working for NHS England and the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) who have already been earmarked to go. ICBs, regional health service bodies which oversee groupings of NHS trusts, employ 25,000 people between them.

Sir Jim Mackey, NHS England's new chief executive, has told the ICBs to cut their running costs by 50% by the end of the year. "Given ICBs employ 25,000 people, that means that half of them are going to go," said a senior NHS official. That could lead to 12,500 posts being lost.

Mackey has also ordered the 220 NHS trusts that provide care across England to cut the number of people working in corporate services, such as HR, finance and communications. That could lead to thousands more officials losing their jobs, say insiders.