ICB Watch · NW NHS workforce evidence

The Christie (Specialist · Greater Manchester)

2026/27 — the year ahead

£25.3mthe savings this board must find in 2026/27.2026/27 Value Improvement Programme: £8.9m identified at Mar-26 with £16.5m gap to target; ~£25.3m identified by M2 (Jun-26). Separately, 25/26 VIP delivered £25.298m (different year — carry-over ruled out)
Christie does not appear in the national payroll dataset used for the comparison line on other cards, so no national figure is shown here. Christie is the NW counter-example: its published 5-year plan shows workforce GROWTH (4,090 → 4,567 WTE).
Last year
Set a reduction target for 2025/26 (agency staff). No cut - grew 4,090->4,567. National payroll figures show that over roughly the same period (April 2025 to April 2026) the trust’s workforce grew by 159 whole-time-equivalent (WTE) posts (+4.2%). The audited accounts record 4 compulsory redundancies in 2025/26. We also checked the trust’s own plan-season board papers (spring 2025): no workforce number was published there either.
Who was cut

The national payroll change above, broken down by staff group (April 2025 to April 2026):

Managers
+0.9
Central functions
+1.4
Senior managers
+1.7
Hotel, property & estates
+7.6
NHS infrastructure support
+12
Support to clinical staff
+30
Professionally qualified clinical staff
+117
Risks it carries
The board’s own risk register scores 1 risk at 15 or more out of 25 iHow risk scores work. Boards score each risk out of 25 (how likely × how serious). We mark every score of 15 or more red — the range treated as very high or extreme. The highest:
  • “Financial balance” — 15 of 25 — financial pressure
If we do not follow the Patient Safety Incident Response Framework (PSIRF) there is a risk that we will miss opportunities to learn lessons and improve patient safety leading to preventable patient harm.
If we do not continuously review our compliance with the regulatory standards and take corrective action where needed there is a risk that we will fall below required fundamental standards and quality of care will be reduced.
What staff say
48.0%say there are enough staff to do their jobtheir benchmark group: 41.4%
25.3%often or always feel burnt outtheir benchmark group: 28.8%
23.2%often think about leavingtheir benchmark group: 26.9%
NHS Staff Survey 2025 · compared with similar trusts iNHS Staff Survey 2025. The comparison figure is the average of the trust’s own “benchmark group” — the set of similar trusts NHS England compares it with.
On the record — the board’s own papers & where every figure comes from
  • Christie agency-reduction trajectory — 27.7 WTE → 19.3 WTE by 2028/29 (30% reduction) Christie Board Papers 26 March 2026 — Workforce strategy section · p.183
  • Audited exit packages, 2025/26. The Christie NHS Foundation Trust — Annual Report and Accounts 2025/26, exit packages note (subject to audit) · p.59
Sources: the trust’s own board papers (cited above) · NHS England workforce statistics (Apr→Apr, our arithmetic) · NHS Staff Survey 2025 · every figure is traceable to the evidence ledger on the audit twin of this page
Plain-English key
WTE / FTEtwo names for the same measure — one full-time post’s worth of paid staff time (two half-time staff count as one). It is a unit of time, not a count of people: a reduction of 100 WTE can mean fewer people, fewer hours, or fewer bank and agency shifts, and is usually a mix. Boards plan and report in WTE across all staff — permanent, bank and agency together — and so does this card, which says which of those a figure counts. Boards write WTE (“whole-time equivalent”); the national statistics write FTE (“full-time equivalent”).
Benchmark groupthe set of similar trusts NHS England compares each trust with in the staff survey.