“Difficult decisions” are ahead across the NHS bodies in the North East – meaning come next year there are likely to be fewer staff at our hospitals and health services.
Hospital bosses around the North East face the need to find huge savings this year(Image: NHS / Newcastle Chronicle)
NHS organisations across the North East are being forced into cuts worth hundreds of millions in the coming year – and ChronicleLive understands job cuts will form part of this. This will, documents show, see almost £468m of savings including through “difficult decisions” needed.
Documents discussed at a meeting of the North East and North Cumbria’s Integrated Care Board (ICB), which commissions NHS services across the region, show that more than £400m needs to be found in “effiiciencies” at our hospital trusts this year.
This follows a similar level of saving required in the financial year to April 2025. Samantha Allen, the chief executive of the ICB told the board meeting the region’s NHS was facing an “incredibly challenging year”. It is understood that voluntary redundancy schemes have already opened at multiple trusts in the area as health bosses scramble to make savings.
This comes as our region’s health service receives a smaller boost in funds than most places around England – as centrally-based chiefs believe our area is “overfunded”.
Ms Allen told the meeting: “We’ve got an incredibly stretching and challenging [financial] plan and in part this is due to the level of non-recurrent benefits supported […] during 24/25 and also what we know is lower than average growth for the ICB in financial terms for this year, What does this mean in practice?
“It does mean that we’ve got significant additional efficiencies to make – and across our NHS organisations in the Integrated Care System this is between 5 and 8% of turnover per organisation.
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“This is at a level we’ve certainly not seen previously. It’s incredibly stretching. As I said, we do have plans in place and we have submitted a financially balanced plan to NHS England and they have now approved and signed that off.”
A document submitted to the board meeting highlighted how “final efficiency plans have increased further up to almost £468m across all providers”. This refers to all NHS trusts including hospital trusts, mental health trusts and the ambulance service operating in an area stretching from the Scottish border to Teesside and across the North Cumbria.
The ICB’s finance chief David Chandler told the meeting how the ICB’s funding allocation had grown by 3.85% – which was lower than most in the country – and that this would need to cover cost increases including the rise in employers’ National Insurance contributions and inflation when it comes to medicines and packages of care.
He also said that previously the region’s health service had used “non-recurrent” ways to save cash each year, but this was not a sustainable way of managing this year-on-year. He added; “Despite those challenges NHS England and the Secretary of State have been very clear that all ICSs must live within their means, must maximize productivity opportunities and must make necessary but sensible decisions – difficult decisions – to live within their means.”
He said that within the region’s NHS trusts this included “£200m of what we might call difficult decisions and it assumes workforce reductions of around 3%”.
In the same report to the board, health bosses wrote: “All providers areforecasting to reduce their workforce, with the exception of one provider [North East Ambulance Service]. Reductions range from 1.8% to 5.7% across providers.
“North East Ambulance Service, as part of a three-year investment and growth programme plans to increase their workforce (by 3%). All providers except NEAS are planning for a reduction in their substantive workforce and are committingto achievement of ambitious plans for bank and agency reduction.”
Another area where savings are sought is when it comes to how much is spent on agency and bank staff to cover workforce gaps. The board meeting heard how Sir Jim Mackey – the acting chief executive of NHS England who has been seconded from his role as chief executive of the Newcastle Hospitals NHS Trust – had written to all senior leaders highlighting the need to slash agency spending.
At the meeting, Ms Allen added: “A letter that arrived over the weekend to all NHS trusts and integrated care boards from the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care and Sir Jim Mackey the chief executive of the NHS requesting that we go further on reducing the use of agency staffing and therefore the spend on agency services.
“Across the NHS we know that many millions of pounds are spent on agency staff and of course a percentage of that funding goes as a direct premium into the pockets of the agency, and this is many pounds that could be better used within the NHS. Having said that we know that workforce supply remains an issue across health care globally and therefore this will require some really concerted effort to build our own temporary workforce and indeed to support the continued recruitment and retention of predominantly our clinical workforce.”
The ICB’s director of people Kelly Angus added: “We are proposing to take a reduction in bank usage of 23.3% and reduce our overall agency usage with a very ambitious target of 51.8% across services.” She said there was work afoot to create a bank system within the NHS across the region.
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