ICB Watch · NW NHS workforce evidence

Liverpool Heart & Chest (Acute-Specialist · Cheshire & Merseyside)

2026/27 — the year ahead

£12.7mthe savings this board must find in 2026/27.2026/27 CIP requirement, £3.1m still unidentified.
−60 WTEthe workforce reduction in its 2026/27 plan. 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.Agreed alongside a £6.0m surplus plan; trust-level figure stated in the UHLG group pack.
Last year
Set a reduction target for 2025/26. Planned a 40 WTE reduction via its savings programme; finished March 2026 on its submitted plan (1,999.5 against 2,000.2 WTE) — but total WTE rose about 30 over the year, so no net reduction was delivered. How they went about it: recruitment controls operated. Against the workforce plan it submitted to NHS England for 2025/26, the trust ended March 2026 0.0% below 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 count is not usable for this trust this year. Whole services — and their staff — moved between organisations during the year, so the count would mix those transfers with genuine cuts. Documented: UHLG group corporate-services TUPE, formal transfer date the first of April, mobilised the previous day — documented in the UHLG pack of May 2026; the RECEIVING body is not named in the source (documented in our transfer audit)-08-09. The board’s own programme figures above are the usable evidence here.
Risks it carries
None of the scored risks on the register we hold reaches 15 of 25. The highest: “Risk to delivery of financial balance” at 12 of 25.
What staff say
54.3%say there are enough staff to do their jobtheir benchmark group: 41.4%
20.8%often or always feel burnt outtheir benchmark group: 28.8%
21.9%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.
Why the cuts?
The trust’s own papers state why it is reducing its workforce: its savings programme (what the NHS calls a cost improvement programme, CIP). 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
  • Liverpool Heart & Chest planned a 40 WTE reduction via CIP. LHCH Finance Report — April 2025 · p.5
  • LHCH 2026/27 workforce plan — a reduction of 60 WTE, agreed alongside a £12.7m cost improvement programme and a £6.0m surplus plan. UHLG Board of Directors Public Pack — 14 May 2026 · p.38
  • LHCH applies vacancy controls (scrutiny of vacancy-control processes). LHCH CEO Report — June 2025 · p.50
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.