Cuts made, targets missed

Set a target (20):
Alder Hey Children's · Countess of Chester Hospital · East Cheshire · East Lancashire Hospitals · Lancashire Teaching Hospitals · Liverpool Heart and Chest Hospital · Liverpool University Hospitals · Liverpool Women's · Manchester University · Mersey and West Lancashire Teaching Hospitals · Mid Cheshire Hospitals · North Cumbria Integrated Care · Northern Care Alliance · Pennine Care · Stockport · Tameside and Glossop Integrated Care · The Christie · The Clatterbridge Cancer Centre · University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay · Wrightington, Wigan and Leigh Teaching Hospitals

Missed it (13):
East Cheshire · East Lancashire Hospitals · Lancashire Teaching Hospitals · Liverpool University Hospitals · Manchester University · Mid Cheshire Hospitals · North Cumbria Integrated Care · Northern Care Alliance · Pennine Care · Stockport · Tameside and Glossop Integrated Care · University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay · Wrightington, Wigan and Leigh Teaching Hospitals

Reported a reduction (16):
Blackpool Teaching Hospitals · Bolton · Countess of Chester Hospital · East Lancashire Hospitals · Lancashire Teaching Hospitals · Lancashire and South Cumbria · Liverpool University Hospitals · Liverpool Women's · Manchester University · Mersey Care · Mersey and West Lancashire Teaching Hospitals · Northern Care Alliance · Pennine Care · The Clatterbridge Cancer Centre · University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay · Warrington and Halton Teaching Hospitals

In both groups (7): they made some of the cuts they planned but still ended the year above the level their own plan set.
East Lancashire Hospitals · Lancashire Teaching Hospitals · Liverpool University Hospitals · Manchester University · Northern Care Alliance · Pennine Care · University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay

Set a target, no outcome held (3): Alder Hey Children's · Liverpool Heart and Chest Hospital · The Christie — a statement about our holdings, not about the trusts.

Reported a reduction with no target in the papers we hold (5): Blackpool Teaching Hospitals · Bolton · Lancashire and South Cumbria · Mersey Care · Warrington and Halton Teaching Hospitals

Targets differ in scope: some cover permanent staff, others only agency or bank hours or funded-but-unfilled posts — each trust’s card states which.

NHS England workforce statistics, whole-time-equivalent staff in post, all staff groups — so it counts everyone working for the trust, not permanent staff alone, and a trust can shed permanent posts while its total holds up.

12 trusts are left out because a merger, transfer or reclassification during the year breaks the comparison:

• Liverpool University Hospitals — estates and facilities staff and services transferred back into the trust from a private provider; UHLG group corporate-services TUPE, formal transfer date the first of April, mobilised the previous day
• Wirral University Teaching Hospital — corporate services moved between Wirral Community and Wirral University Teaching as part of partnership working between the trusts
• Warrington and Halton Teaching Hospitals — Bridgewater Community Healthcare absorbed
• Liverpool Heart and Chest Hospital — UHLG group corporate-services TUPE, formal transfer date the first of April, mobilised the previous day
• Liverpool Women's — UHLG group corporate-services TUPE, formal transfer date the first of April, mobilised the previous day
• Wirral Community Health & Care — corporate services moved between Wirral Community and Wirral University Teaching as part of partnership working between the trusts
• Bridgewater Community Healthcare — stopped reporting during the year
• Manchester University — unexplained step changes in its monthly figures, so the year-on-year change cannot be read as a trend
• Blackpool Teaching Hospitals — One LSC shared corporate-services transfer; LSC pathology single service transferred to LTH as lead provider on the first of April
• East Lancashire Hospitals — One LSC shared corporate-services transfer; LSC pathology single service transferred to LTH as lead provider on the first of April
• Lancashire Teaching Hospitals — One LSC shared corporate-services transfer; LSC pathology single service transferred to LTH as lead provider on the first of April
• University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay — One LSC shared corporate-services transfer; LSC pathology single service transferred to LTH as lead provider on the first of April

Managers were not spared, but the weight of the reduction fell on administrative and clerical staff in central functions. Across all 31 trusts, senior managers fell by 2.9 per cent and managers fell by 1.1 per cent between April 2025 and April 2026 — against a workforce that shrank by 0.4 per cent overall. Because managers are a small group (about 4,900 posts, one in six of the infrastructure-support total), those falls amount to 84 of the 797 whole-time-equivalent posts lost from infrastructure support — about 11 in every hundred. The largest loss was among non-patient-facing administrative and clerical staff: 712 posts, one in every 23 in that group. Estates was flat.

This table covers all 31 trusts, including the 5 that cannot be tracked trust by trust on the same basis, so its totals are larger than the figures above.

NHS England bundles managers, senior managers, non-patient-facing clerical staff and estates together as ‘infrastructure support’; a movement in the combined group says nothing about managers on its own, which is why the four are shown separately. This is a total across all 31 trusts, not a minimum. Qualified clinical staff rose while support to clinical staff fell by a similar amount; that can be a skill-mix change or posts reclassified between the groups, and NHS England’s data-quality notes record no reclassification for this period, so we leave it as unexplained rather than settled either way.

Where a trust’s papers say how a workforce reduction was made, the commonest answer is leaving posts unfilled. Each entry below is one reported reduction; a trust can appear more than once.

‘No method stated’ means the paper names none — itself a finding. ‘Several methods at once’ means the trust itemises more than one.

The chart counts reported reductions, and only 5 are put down to a voluntary exit scheme — although at least 18 trusts have run one. Most papers do not say which lever produced which cut.

Beyond permanent posts, workforce costs were reduced in a patchwork of ways. At least 18 of the 31 trusts ran a mutually agreed resignation or voluntary redundancy scheme; at least 26 operate recruitment controls — a vacancy panel or a freeze. Both are minimums: only trusts whose papers say so are counted.

Where a reason is given at all, it is overwhelmingly the savings programme: of the 29 trusts whose board papers say anything codable about the workforce, 19 state a reason in their own words and 16 of those cite their own efficiency-savings programme (CIP). 10 state no reason anywhere.

At least 18 of the 31 trusts have run a mutually agreed resignation scheme (MARS), where staff are paid to leave by agreement, or a voluntary redundancy scheme. These are the trusts, in their own papers’ words. Few publish how many people left or what it cost.

A trust not listed may still have run a scheme: only trusts whose public papers say so are counted. Counts from annual accounts are MARS agreements, not people or posts.