ICB Watch · NW NHS workforce evidence

Countess of Chester (Acute · Cheshire & Merseyside)

2026/27 — the year ahead

No 2026/27 workforce target published — none appears in the public papers we hold. iWhat does a “workforce reduction” mean? Not always people losing their jobs. Boards count in WTE — units of one full-time post — and the routes differ in who they touch. Cutting agency work: paid work lost, but no NHS post existed. Cutting bank shifts: extra shifts mostly worked by the trust’s own staff — a pay cut that never shows in post counts. Freezing vacancies: no one is dismissed, but the post and its future job go, and the work lands on those who remain. Deleting posts shrinks the establishment itself. Voluntary exits: MARS is a paid resignation without redundancy rights; voluntary redundancy is redundancy on volunteered terms. Compulsory redundancy is the rarest route — boards report it separately in their audited accounts.
Last year
Cut posts in 2025/26 — a WTE reduction. 108 of a 182 WTE planned reduction achieved by Nov via vacancy release. How they went about it: recruitment controls operated. National payroll figures show that over roughly the same period (April 2025 to April 2026) the trust’s workforce fell by 34 whole-time-equivalent (WTE) posts (-0.8%). Against the workforce plan it submitted to NHS England for 2025/26, the trust ended March 2026 4.7% above the level its own plan set for that month, counting total staff in post (substantive plus bank and agency) (read from the Cheshire & Merseyside system report’s monitoring chart).
Who was cut

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

Support to clinical staff
−69
NHS infrastructure support
−12
Hotel, property & estates
−7.2
Central functions
−4.8
Senior managers
−1.9
Managers
+2.0
Professionally qualified clinical staff
+47
Risks it carries
The board’s own risk register scores 7 risks 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 of them:
  • “quality of care” — 16 of 25 — risk to quality and safety of care
  • “safety and harm” — 16 of 25 — risk to quality and safety of care
  • “financial plan” — 16 of 25 — financial pressure
queried whether the target risk score of nine for patient safety was too high. KW explained that due to the high impact nature of safety risks, a higher score is often seen albeit the context of minimising risks to quality is important.
What staff say
20.7%say there are enough staff to do their jobtheir benchmark group: 31.3%
38.2%often or always feel burnt outtheir benchmark group: 32.4%
38.0%often think about leavingtheir benchmark group: 29.9%
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.
Why the cuts?
No explicit reason stated — none found in the public record. iNo explicit reason for the workforce reduction appears anywhere in the public board papers we hold and coded. Reasons may have been discussed in private session — we are not privy to those discussions; we record what the public papers show. Where the trust has published a savings requirement, that context appears on this card, and readers can weigh it for themselves.
On the record — the board’s own papers & where every figure comes from
  • Countess of Chester planned a 182 WTE reduction for 2025/26 (People update to the 25 Nov 2025 board). Countess of Chester Board of Directors — November 2025 · p.19
  • Countess of Chester had achieved 108 of its planned 182 WTE reduction by November 2025, mainly by releasing vacancies. Countess of Chester Board of Directors — November 2025 · p.19
  • Countess of Chester runs a Vacancy Control Panel (recruitment control) Countess of Chester Board — 31 March 2026
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”).
MARS“mutually agreed resignation scheme” — a voluntary paid-exit scheme.
Establishmentthe number of funded posts a trust plans to employ — its budgeted staffing level — whether or not each post is filled. Removing a vacancy from the establishment cuts the planned staffing level without anyone losing a job.
Substantivepermanently employed staff, as opposed to bank or agency staff.
Benchmark groupthe set of similar trusts NHS England compares each trust with in the staff survey.