ICB Watch · NW NHS workforce evidence

Liverpool University Hospitals (Acute · Cheshire & Merseyside)

2026/27 — the year ahead

£102.2mthe savings this board must find in 2026/27.2026/27 cost improvement programme, breakeven plan — stated in the same board sentence as the workforce figure. The pack also states a £23.97m in-year 26/27 CIP figure with a £55.9m 25/26 shortfall carried forward — both are the trust’s own figures.
−826 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.826 WTE, the largest single 26/27 figure held. Context: it set a 1,183 WTE target for 25/26 and instead grew (+543 on the national count).
Last year
Cut posts in 2025/26 — its figure counts paid staff on all contracts — and still finished above its workforce plan. LUHFT’s own target was a 1,183 WTE reduction in budgeted headcount; by month eleven its budgeted posts were down 103 — about 9% of the target, on the trust’s own reporting. Its savings programme also ended the year £39.2m short of the portion meant to repeat every year (recurrent — one-off savings filled some of the gap instead). How they went about it: a voluntary exit (MARS) scheme ran and recruitment controls operated. Against the workforce plan it submitted to NHS England for 2025/26, the trust ended March 2026 7.4% 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 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: estates and facilities staff and services transferred BACK INTO the trust from a private provider — insourcing, which reads as growth in the national data and is not; documented, Data Quality Annex entry DQ522; 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: “Financial Resilience & Sustainability” at 12 of 25.
For LUHFT, NHSE has additionally imposed a licence condition under Section 111 of the Health and Social Care Act 2012, representing a formal regulatory escalation beyond enforcement undertakings alone. … The Section 111 condition introduces binding governance requirements and increased regulatory oversight, reflecting NHSE's conclusion that the Trust risks failing to comply with key licence conditions without strengthened controls.
There is a risk that we are unable to maintain standards of safety and care, with patients suffering avoidable harm and poor outcomes. As a result, this will also affect the experience for patients, increase pressure on staff and services, and increase regulatory scrutiny.
What staff say
31.2%say there are enough staff to do their jobtheir benchmark group: 31.3%
32.2%often or always feel burnt outtheir benchmark group: 32.4%
33.8%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?
The trust’s own papers state why it is reducing its workforce: 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
  • LUHFT/UHLG gross WTE reduction FY YTD — "significantly behind trajectory required" UHLG Board of Directors Public Pack 12 March 2026 — Workforce section (paid WTE run-rate) · p.280
  • LUHFT 2025/26 M12 paid WTE delivery — -429 WTE total reduction (gross), £39.2m short of recurrent CIP plan UHLG Board of Directors Public Pack 14 May 2026 — LUHFT M12 Finance summary · p.293
  • LUHFT workforce plan (discussed at UHLG Board, Jun 2025): schemes targeting a 232 WTE reduction through lower bank rates UHLG Board of Directors Public Pack — 10 July 2025 (draft minutes of the 5 June 2025 Board) · p.14
  • LUHFT (UHLG group) — group-level recruitment freeze + joint vacancy controls UHLG Board of Directors Public Pack — 12 March 2026 · p.339
  • LUHFT (UHLG) ran a MARS scheme to support CIP delivery UHLG Board of Directors — 12 March 2026 · p.307
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.
Underlying (run-rate) deficitNHS boards’ term for the pace of overspending carried into a year — the full-year deficit that would result if nothing changed. Not money already overspent.
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.