UNISON warns of NHS cuts
UNISON warns that around 20,000 NHS jobs are at risk as a £1.1bn deficit grows, with broader reports estimating up to 21,000 jobs cuts by 2028 across hospitals and community services. The reporting links projected workforce pressure to potential burnout and service reductions in clinical support areas (openaccessgovernment.org).
Thousands of National Health Service jobs in England are set to go as trusts try to close deficits that UNISON says topped £1.1 billion last year. (unison.org.uk) UNISON’s report says trusts will cut at least 21,600 funded posts by 2028, based on Freedom of Information responses from providers across hospital, community and mental health services. The union says the tally is a minimum because some trusts could not provide full data. (unison.org.uk) The union says at least 3,600 of the planned losses are clinical roles, including nurses, midwives and healthcare assistants. It says posts are being removed through redundancies, vacancy freezes, restructuring, deleted vacancies and lower use of agency and bank staff. (unison.org.uk) UNISON identified some of the biggest planned reductions at University Hospitals Sussex National Health Service Foundation Trust, with more than 1,500 funded posts, and at Blackpool Teaching Hospitals and Frimley Health, with about 1,200 each. It also cited deficits of more than £47 million at East Lancashire Hospitals and nearly £39 million at Barking, Havering and Redbridge. (unison.org.uk) The pressure comes from a financing system that requires local National Health Service systems to plan within the money available and seek financial balance. National Health Service England said in May 2025 that all systems were aiming for a net balanced position in 2025/26 after closing an initial £4.4 billion planning gap. (england.nhs.uk, england.nhs.uk) That same National Health Service England paper said planned system efficiencies averaged 7.1% for 2025/26, with the total workforce across substantive, bank and agency staff set 2.0% below 2024/25 levels and agency use due to fall 40% by March 2026. (england.nhs.uk) The jobs warning lands during a wider restructuring of the health service in England. The government said in March 2025 that National Health Service England would be brought back into the Department of Health and Social Care, and local integrated care boards were told to cut running costs by 50%. (gov.uk, kingsfund.org.uk) UNISON says staff are already reporting strain from earlier cuts. In its separate workforce survey of almost 20,000 National Health Service employees, 65% said job losses had increased workloads, 65% said stress had risen, 47% said systems and processes had become slower, and 42% said patients were getting a worse service. (unison.org.uk) The Department of Health and Social Care has argued that merging National Health Service England into the department and cutting bureaucracy will shift money to frontline care. UNISON says the opposite is happening on the ground, with trusts cutting staff first as they try to make their numbers add up. (gov.uk, unison.org.uk) For patients, the immediate question is not a single round of redundancies but a smaller workforce spread across more services. UNISON’s report says trusts are trimming posts now, while some are already warning they may still need extra government support by 2028. (unison.org.uk)
