ICB Watch · NW NHS workforce evidence

Wrightington, Wigan & Leigh (Acute · Greater Manchester)

2026/27 — the year ahead

£31.8mthe savings this board must find in 2026/27.Raised by £3m
−310 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.310 WTE (4.5%), aligned with and distinct from 317 WTE of savings assumed through CIP delivery: the trust’s own distinction, never conflated.
Last year
Missed its 2025/26 workforce plan. 105 WTE above its 6,749 WTE workforce plan at February 2026 (a plan that itself fell from 6,866 over the year); the gap was narrowing from 209 in December and is almost entirely bank staff — permanent staff were within about 10 WTE of plan. 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 fell by 114 whole-time-equivalent (WTE) posts (-1.8%).
Who was cut

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

Support to clinical staff
−67
NHS infrastructure support
−67
Central functions
−41
Hotel, property & estates
−18
Managers
−4.6
Senior managers
−4.3
Professionally qualified clinical staff
+21
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:
  • “Financial Performance — Recovery Strategy delivery” — 16 of 25 — financial pressure
There is a risk that quality of care across the Trust may deteriorate, due to resource limitations restricting our ability to improve, resulting in increased patient delays, incidents of avoidable harm, reputational damage and an increase in complaints.
There is a risk that the Trust may fail to deliver the Financial Recovery Strategy, due to issues with the revenue, capital and cash position, failure to deliver CIP and issues with productivity metrics and the underlying financial position, resulting in breaches in financial statutory duties.
What staff say
34.0%say there are enough staff to do their jobtheir benchmark group: 31.3%
29.4%often or always feel burnt outtheir benchmark group: 32.4%
28.9%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). 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
  • WWL workforce plan 6,764 WTE for 2025/26; actual 6,950 WTE in October 2025 (M7) = +186 WTE above plan (gap widening) WWL Board of Directors public bundle — 3 December 2025 (BAF / Operational Plan) · p.40+82+188
  • WWL workforce trajectory Q3→Q4 — IMPROVING from +209 above plan to +105 above plan WWL Board of Directors Public Bundle 1 April 2026 — M11 workforce report · p.115
  • WWL workforce plan declining trajectory — 6,866 → 6,749 WTE across 5 board cycles Five consecutive Board of Directors packs Jun 2025 → Apr 2026 · p.115
  • WWL runs MARS scheme alongside weekly Executive Vacancy Panel WWL Board of Directors Public Bundle — 3 December 2025, M8 IPR · p.45+46+82
  • WWL ran a MARS scheme in 2025/26 (+£1.6m). WWL Board of Directors Public Bundle — 3 December 2025 · p.65
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.
Benchmark groupthe set of similar trusts NHS England compares each trust with in the staff survey.