NHS England to be abolished

[Chelsea2026]

Shocking news that NHS England is to be abolished by 2027 and all functions moved into DHSC!

About time too! Next they need to abolish the wasteful money pits that are local NHS Trusts and make it all truly 'national' again.

Pointless jobs?

Maybe that's the issue with the NHS - it is admin-heavy and far too much money is paying for that instead of front-line services and immediate administrative support for clinical staff.

I don't have to go to hospital all that often, but when I do, the corridors are full of managerial-looking people striding about.

I suspect in reality a lot of jobs will be absorbed by DHSC but there will be a reduction on duplication. Things like NHS cyber will just move to DHSC. I do think this is generally a good thing but it will be interesting to see how it plays out

I put a list, a few posts north of that that explained a small proportion of the things these organisations do. They mainly aren't the ones reference walking the corridors.

Which bits, of my list above, do you want to be channeled into front line staff instead?

Is it the education programmes to keep up with nurses' CPD? Or the information systems with patient records in them? Or the organisation of vaccination services? Or working out what services need to be delivered where? Or how to deliver specialised services? Maybe you'd stop buying drugs for hospitals.

And what do you think is going to happen when those things aren't done?

You can't organise healthcare for 67 million people without boring back office staff. As I've said before, I'm not saying they're perfect but you can't get rid of half the staff and still achieve all those things.

@madaffodil actually that’s a false claim. Every study has shown that they NHS is under managed when compared to other, successful healthcare systems

@maria2bela1 I’m sending you a huge hug, it’s a shit place to be in

I’m in an ICB, work my arse off in quality - helping to figure out how to make care safer. Feel completely demoralised tbh

I am really sorry for that and for everyone else in a similar position but i think it is a good thing.
Doesn't help you though @maria2bela1 and I hope you get another job quickly

Not all quangos are the same…

It’s going to have devastating impacts on local economies, Leeds is home to one of the biggest NHS England employers.

The tech market is tough enough, I also work kinda inside NHSE and senior leaders of NHSE were completely blindsided to this decision.

I am not sure this “shock and awe” playing to the headlines is going to be effective tbh

And for the people involved, terrible to hear on the news about this change - if a private company announced a whole division would go with 50% job cuts people would be up in arms …

There is a reason no other country in the world copies the UK NHS as a model

I was hoping there would be a grown up discussion about healthcare reform and funding … too much to hope for

As an employee that is going to be affected by this, it's really difficult news to be announced. I'm also surprised it wasn't leaked beforehand. The trust I work for has released a panicked email trying to summarise the announcement. Some of the announcements are due to take effect by December 2025 which seems unattainable.

Looking at with an impartial view, I can see why it will benefit the NHS. Essentially lots of NHS clerical staff are on AFC pay scales which means they get all AFC t&C, entitled to all the pay rises and benefits and it's simply not affordable. Once you start outsourcing those jobs to other companies you save a lot of money.

I trust this government and I think their reforms will be far more progressive than the last a-holes who were in charge.

Reform and change is absolutely needed as we all know the NHS has its issues. This isn't a well thought out reform, it's a gut reaction of a government trying to make their make and please their voters. Those at the highest level have had some inkling it was coming as they're jumping like rats from a sinking ship. For everyone else the first they know about it is when the PM announces it to the nation. For those individuals affected it's a truly awful situation to be in, with no idea of whether they'll have a job in a few months time as no-one can tell them what the plan is.

Blimey that is quick. By 2027? Where is this stated please. Not entirely surprised.

I think the OP meant it's shocking that it hasn't happened sooner 😉

I worked in a regional team for the last four years until recently, and we also oversaw the implementation of policies and ensure local ICBs are doing what they are supposed to do, scrutinising data and supporting ICBs to do what they are supposed to do.

There's a lot of important functions happening in NHSE which will need to be done by someone regardless of the name of the organisation.

@pickywatermelon "And for the people involved, terrible to hear on the news about this change - if a private company announced a whole division would go with 50% job cuts people would be up in arms"

no. No one gives a crap usually when private companies make massive redundancies. There was a lot of sympathy of course social media when the P&O thing happened. The banks have done mass redundancies without anybody noticing or caring.

Unless you mean being up in arms about the news. A poster on another thread has said that Amanda Pritchard sent out an email before the announcement on TV. There's nothing you can do about that. The announcement has to go to everybody at the same and my closest friend was on holiday when the last redundancy happened to her. So she wouldn't have seen an email. Her boss rang her on holiday, which was the decent thing to do, but ironically, my friend was really pissed off about being contacted on holiday.

Being made redundant is crap. But we have all been through it. And I was also saying on the other thread, no one seems to give a shit when it's a private company. And usually in a private company, you get very little warning and they will often target people with under two years service so they can get them out quickly and without a payoff.

Public sectors have a level of protection that I can't even imagine. If I had gone into the public sector 30 years ago, I would probably be much better off now.

I think it's also worth noting that continuing healthcare teams are employed by the ICBs. I have recently left CHC and it's already hugely stretched. It's already a difficult job as CHC assessors are under so couch pressure from everyone and get so much abuse for doing their job. The ICB cut will make waits for CHC assessments even longer.

Public services are measured in Efficacy and Efficiency. Ie how efficient they are at utilising the resources they have and how effective the output is. I don't have a full understanding on NSHE and how it works but anything to improve both of those things has to be good thing.

"Admin-heavy" work is a weird thing to moan about. I've seen a ton of people utterly frustrated when their appointment letter reaches them after the appointment date, or to their old address.

It's not brain surgery, granted, but without admin being done the brain surgery won't be either.

But that's rooted in improving efficiency within hospital systems

if NHS England are involved in that, then should they be? Internal hospital admin should be doing that surely.

I’ve experience working with NHSE in my university role. It’s mostly been negative tbh. All they wanted from me was data and stats but I received very little constructive help to create more trained nurses on the ground. I do feel for individuals in these roles. There are not other NHS jobs to move into currently.

Sounds like a good idea if roles are duplicated between a government department and this body.

I am sorry but this nonsense, every health care system in the world has management and the nhs actually has a lower proportion of managers than other better performing healthcare systems.

Nhs managers have become a useful political football for politicians who don't want to provide the nhs with the level of funding it needs or resolve the difficult problems such as workforce shortages

We still spend less per head on healthcare than most other countries and the money saved by reducing the nhs england workforce makes up an incredibly tiny proportion of the total budget

People say things were better before nhs england was established which is correct but misses the point that funding per capita declined significantly from that point due to austerity

There were also regional bodies that soke of the work nhs england does now prior to 2012 but there is no reference to those being stood back up.

If people think this will improve things for patients they will be disappointed, as most healthcare think tanks have pointed out this work will be a distraction from the real job of improving services

I wholly disagree - NHS England is there to produce statistics and help drive national NHS trust policy and without the data how can we know how the NHS is doing and whether they are meeting targets. NHSE should remain!