ICB Watch · NW NHS workforce evidence

North Cumbria Integrated Care (Acute · Lancashire & South Cumbria · in ICB profile)

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
Missed its 2025/26 workforce plan. Planned a 355 WTE reduction; finished March 2026 521 WTE above plan — an over-run the trust says was inflated by services transferring in. 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 88 whole-time-equivalent (WTE) posts (+1.4%). The audited accounts record 2 compulsory redundancies in 2025/26 and 12 departures under the voluntary MARS scheme.
Who was cut

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

Support to clinical staff
−56
Hotel, property & estates
−3.8
Senior managers
+0.3
Managers
+1.6
NHS infrastructure support
+30
Central functions
+32
Professionally qualified clinical staff
+114
Risks it carries
We do not hold this trust’s board risk register. This is a gap in our evidence, not a statement that the board records no serious risks. Ask your trust to publish its Board Assurance Framework with its board papers.
What staff say
29.1%say there are enough staff to do their jobtheir benchmark group: 31.3%
30.5%often or always feel burnt outtheir benchmark group: 32.4%
33.1%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.
On the record — the board’s own papers & where every figure comes from
  • North Cumbria planned a 355.26 WTE reduction for 2025/26. North Cumbria Board of Directors Public — May 2026
  • North Cumbria ran +521 WTE over plan at M12 year-end (6,874 actual vs 6,353 planned) — planned reduction not delivered; over-run inflated by service transfers in. North Cumbria Board of Directors Public — May 2026 · p.194
  • North Cumbria (NCIC) 2026/27 target to reduce agency usage by 30% Public Board, May 2026 · p.38
  • Audited exit packages, 2025/26. North Cumbria Integrated Care NHS Foundation Trust — Annual Report and Accounts 2025/26, exit packages note (subject to audit) · p.76
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.
Benchmark groupthe set of similar trusts NHS England compares each trust with in the staff survey.
ICB“integrated care board” — the NHS body that plans and funds care for an area.