ICB Watch · NW NHS workforce evidence

Greater Manchester Mental Health (Mental health · Greater Manchester)

2026/27 — the year ahead

£31.4mthe savings this board must find in 2026/27.2026/27 efficiency target (verbatim) — plus emerging risks up to £12.2m worst case
No 2026/27 workforce (post) target published — its 26/27 plans instead target temporary staffing: agency down 30%, bank down 12%. That cuts paid work, but not employed posts. 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
No 2025/26 workforce reduction target found in the papers we hold. During 25/26 a voluntary exit (MARS) scheme ran for employed staff — 8 of 69 applications were taken to the panel. Recruitment controls also operated (a weekly vacancy panel). National payroll figures show that over roughly the same period (April 2025 to April 2026) the trust’s workforce grew by 2.9 whole-time-equivalent (WTE) posts (+0.0%). 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):

Support to clinical staff
−77
Senior managers
−3.1
Managers
−0.6
Hotel, property & estates
+0.1
NHS infrastructure support
+18
Central functions
+21
Professionally qualified clinical staff
+61
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:
  • “Financial Sustainability” — 20 of 25 — financial pressure
  • “Safe Care” — 20 of 25
There is a risk that if we do not implement and embed our new corporate governance arrangements, decision-making will be confused, inconsistent and sub-optimal with the potential to lead to regulatory challenge and a risk to exiting the Recovery Support Programme.
On Thursday 27 November 2025, NHS England formally approved GMMH's exit from the Recovery Support Programme having recognised the significant improvements in governance, quality and safety that have been achieved because of everyone's hard work. This means that GMMH can now move out of the Recovery Support Programme, marking an important milestone in our improvement journey. The final System Improvement Board took place on the 02 December 2025, where we were congratulated for the progress made. A period of Enhanced Oversight will remain in place under the Provider Oversight Meeting, until the 31 March 2026.
What staff say
35.0%say there are enough staff to do their jobtheir benchmark group: 36.5%
29.2%often or always feel burnt outtheir benchmark group: 27.1%
32.1%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?
No explicit reason stated — none found in the public record. The trust’s 2026/27 savings requirement of £31.4m appears at the top of this card; its papers stop short of stating the reason in words. 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
  • GMMH planned a 12% year-on-year reduction in bank staffing for 2026/27, alongside a 30% reduction in agency — temporary staffing, not the substantive establishment. GMMH BoD Part 1 Public Pack — 12 March 2026, section 4.2 Workforce Plan · p.165
  • GMMH MARS scheme activity Q4 25/26 GMMH BoD Part1 Public Full Pack 14 May 2026 — People Committee Chair's Report · p.26
  • GMMH ran a small MARS scheme — 8 of 69 applications taken to the MARS panel (People Committee report, May 2026). GMMH BoD Part 1 Public Pack — 14 May 2026 · p.26
  • GMMH's MARS scheme cost £80k against an expected £200k and produced recurrent savings of £1m against an anticipated £1.5m (Chief Finance Officer to the November 2025 board). GMMH Board of Directors (Part 1) public pack, 15 January 2026 — minutes of the previous (November 2025) Part 1 board, Chief Finance Officer's report · p.12
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.