ICB Watch · NW NHS workforce evidence

Cheshire & Wirral Partnership (Mental health · Cheshire & Merseyside)

2026/27 — the year ahead

£14.8mthe savings this board must find in 2026/27.26/27 efficiency plan £14.8m recurrent, submitted to NHSE
−150 WTEthe workforce reduction in its 2026/27 plan · a cost target expressed as posts, not a count of jobs. 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.2026/27: the pair — a 150 WTE reduction recognised in its efficiency detail while the overall workforce plan moves just −5.65 WTE across the year (4,088.22 → 4,082.57;). Neither half is cited alone. The earlier 401 WTE was a rejected NHSE estimate, not CWP’s plan.
Last year
No 2025/26 workforce reduction target found in the papers we hold. The board acknowledged pressure to reduce staffing in 2025/26, but no verified figure for a reduction appears in the papers we hold (the 150 WTE figure could not be verified). How they went about it: a voluntary exit (MARS) scheme ran and recruitment controls operated. National payroll figures show that over roughly the same period (April 2025 to April 2026) the trust’s workforce grew by 112 whole-time-equivalent (WTE) posts (+3.0%). Against the workforce plan it submitted to NHS England for 2025/26, the trust ended March 2026 4.6% 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):

Central functions
−20
NHS infrastructure support
−11
Senior managers
+1.2
Managers
+1.3
Hotel, property & estates
+7.0
Support to clinical staff
+53
Professionally qualified clinical staff
+70
Risks it carries
The board’s own risk register scores 2 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:
  • “Right care, right place, right time — patients waiting longer increasing harm risk” — 16 of 25 — risk to quality and safety of care
  • “Skilled, diverse, inclusive and healthy people — workforce shortages → quality deterioration” — 16 of 25 — staffing and workforce pressure
In response to the recent CQC Well-led inspection findings (breach of Regulation 17 Good Governance) and the actions agreed in response to the Trust's move to Segment 3 of Single Oversight Framework and in line with work already planned, the previous Integrated Governance Policy was retired and the new Risk Management Policy agreed in its place.
MIAA, the Trust internal auditor recently concluding an audit of the risk improvement work resulting in a moderate assurance opinion. This reported to the Audit Committee in January 2026. As a result, some further work has been commissioned from MIAA (associate arm) to review existing BAF risks with a view to resetting the BAF for 2026/27. The output of this work will report to the April Board workshop with the May Committees receiving the aligned cut of BAF risks for review.
What staff say
35.1%say there are enough staff to do their jobtheir benchmark group: 36.5%
24.7%often or always feel burnt outtheir benchmark group: 27.1%
24.0%often think about leavingtheir benchmark group: 27.5%
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?
The trust’s own papers state why it is reducing its workforce: a requirement set nationally by NHS England; its savings programme (what the NHS calls a cost improvement programme, CIP); and a further reason stated in its papers. iThese are the reasons the trust itself gives for its workforce reduction, coded from its public board papers. Wider pressures — on services, waiting times or safety — appear under “Risks it carries”, from the board’s own risk register.
On the record — the board’s own papers & where every figure comes from
  • CWP 2026/27 planned WTE impact of its efficiency programme — 150 WTE (a CIP-derived figure; the trust's overall planned workforce movement for the year is 5.65 WTE) CWP PUBLIC BoD Agenda Pack 25 March 2026 — Efficiency VS WTE Plan analysis · p.441
  • CWP's 2026/27 workforce plan reduces its workforce by 5.65 WTE overall — from a Month 12 2025/26 outturn of 4,088.22 WTE to a plan of 4,082.57 WTE — despite a 149.7 WTE reduction attributed to the efficiency programme. CWP PUBLIC BoD Agenda Pack 25 March 2026 — MTP Triangulation, 2026/27 Workforce Planning · p.440
  • CWP approved a time-limited trust-wide MARS (Board, 30 July 2025, retrospective approval) as part of its efficiency plan to reduce corporate staffing costs by end Q3 2025/26; uptake not reported in later public packs. CWP Board of Directors public agenda pack, 18 September 2025 — minutes of the 30 July 2025 board, item 25-26-09a Mutually Agreed Resignation Scheme (MARS) · p.12
  • CWP — recruitment freeze on identified roles + workforce productivity work via CWPi CWP Board of Directors Public Agenda Pack — 25 March 2026 · p.9
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”).
CIP“cost improvement programme” — the NHS term for a savings plan.
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.