University Hospitals Morecambe Bay (Acute · Lancashire & South Cumbria · in ICB profile)
2026/27 — the year ahead
£30.3mthe savings this board must find in 2026/27.26/27 efficiency submission gross total c£30.3m
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
Cut posts in 2025/26 — its figure counts funded but unfilled posts removed — a cut to the planned staffing level rather than to people in post — and still finished above its workforce plan. 208 WTE above the plan it set in June 2025, at January 2026 — or 48 WTE above the trust’s own re-based profile, which folds in the 810 WTE One LSC transfer; it delivered 6 of a planned 25 WTE reduction that month; no year-end position held. How they went about it: recruitment controls operated. The audited accounts record 9 compulsory redundancies in 2025/26. 2025/26 actual change (NHS Digital HCHS FTE, Apr 2025→Apr 2026) Support & admin within that: +588. The 26/27 plan explicitly includes further workforce reduction — no figure stated.
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: One LSC shared corporate-services transfer (ELHT is host) (documented in our transfer audit)-08-07; LSC pathology single service transferred to LTH as lead provider on the first of April — donors named in the pack as ELHT, Blackpool and Morecambe Bay, moving under TUPE with roles and locations unchanged; documented (documented in our transfer audit)-08-09. The board’s own programme figures above are the usable evidence here.
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%
32.4%often or always feel burnt outtheir benchmark group: 32.4%
36.6%often think about leavingtheir benchmark group: 29.9%
Why the cuts?
The trust’s own papers state why it is reducing its workforce: 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
- UHMB WTE removed (delivered, non-safety-critical) UHMB Public Board Agenda Pack — 4 March 2026 (Growing for the Future, Vacancy Position) · p.135
- UHMB planned to reduce establishment to a M12 position of 6,525 WTE (within the £32.5m WRFIP). UHMB Public Board Agenda Pack — 4 March 2026 · p.134
- UHMB ran 208 WTE over its M3 workforce plan (an over-plan variance, not a delivered cut). UHMB Public Board Agenda Pack — 4 March 2026 · p.134
- UHMB — Vacancy Control Panel; non-safety-critical reductions (77.5 WTE removed) UHMB Public Board Agenda Pack — 4 March 2026 · p.135
- Audited exit packages, 2025/26. University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust — Annual Report and Accounts 2025/26, exit packages note (subject to audit) · p.87
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”).
NHS Digital HCHS countthe national monthly staffing count (Hospital and Community Health Services) — an independent payroll-based count, separate from what boards report.
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.