Wirral Community Health & Care (Community · Cheshire & Merseyside)
2026/27 — the year ahead
£6.0mthe savings this board must find in 2026/27.2026/27 CIP target — 6%, profiled equally across the year. A surplus community trust — qualified counter-example.
The trust's savings (CIP) target converted into posts (cip-equivalent).
Last year
No 2025/26 workforce reduction target found in the papers we hold. No cut — surplus community trust. Against the workforce plan it submitted to NHS England for 2025/26, the trust ended March 2026 0.1% 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: corporate services moved between Wirral Community and Wirral University Teaching as part of partnership working between the trusts — documented, Data Quality Annex entry DQ525. The board’s own programme figures above are the usable evidence here.
Risks it carries
The board’s own risk register scores
1 risk 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:
- “Our people do not feel looked after; their employee experience is poor; health and wellbeing not prioritised” — 16 of 25 — staff morale and wellbeing
The BAF includes 9 strategic risks, and ID07 is currently scoring at a high-level. No risk has achieved its target risk rating.
What staff say
22.2%say there are enough staff to do their jobtheir benchmark group: 34.5%
30.5%often or always feel burnt outtheir benchmark group: 26.7%
32.0%often think about leavingtheir benchmark group: 26.1%
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
- WCHC 2026/27 CIP target equates to 64 WTE Wirral Group Board — 3 June 2026 · p.78
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.
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.