NHS England to cut workforce by half as Streeting restructures
NHS England will lose half its staff and a huge swathe of its senior management team as part of a brutal restructuring under its new boss.Its workforce will shrink from 13,000 to about 6,500 as entire teams are axed to save money and avoid “duplication” with officials at the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC).NHS England staff said they were “in shock and awe” at the scale of the job cuts, which go far beyond the loss of 2,000 posts to save £175m announced just weeks ago.The DHSC will also become smaller as a result of a process that will see it working much more closely from April with NHS England, though it will shed far fewer staff than the latter.The changes will give Wes Streeting, the health secretary, far more control over the organisation that is responsible for the operational performance of the health service in England.
“These changes represent the biggest reshaping of the NHS’s national architecture in more than a decade,” said Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, which represents NHS trusts in England,Amanda Pritchard, NHS England’s outgoing chief executive, broke the news to staff today in an email that made clear Streeting had instigated the organisation’s dramatic downsizing,He has asked Jim Mackey, her successor, and Dr Penny Dash, NHS England’s incoming new chair, to lead on the “radical reform of the size and functions of the centre [how NHS staff refer to NHS England and the DHSC’s respective headquarters in London],” Pritchard said,That will “deliver significant changes in our relationship with DHSC to eradicate duplication”,Pritchard announced two weeks ago, after weeks of talks with Streeting, that she was stepping down at the end of the month.
A “formal change programme board” or “transition team” of DHSC and NHS England officials will oversee the slimming down of the two organisations.It will report to Dash and Alan Milburn, the former Labour health secretary Streeting appointed as the DHSC’s lead non-executive director, the board’s co-chairs.“As part of this, they will be looking at ways of radically reducing the size of NHS England that could see the centre decrease by around half,” Pritchard said.The news would be “very unsettling” and involve “uncertainty and worry” for staff, she added.Pritchard also announced that Julian Kelly, NHS England’s deputy chief executive and finance chief, chief operating officer Emily Lawson and chief delivery officer Steve Russell will follow her out the door this month.
They “feel it is the right time to move on and allow a new transition team, led by Jim, to reshape how NHS England and DHSC work together,” she said,Prof Sir Stephen Powis, the service’s national medical director, announced last Thursday that he was leaving too,One NHS England staffer said: “People here have been expecting change over the last couple of weeks but not as much change as is now apparent,They feel baffled, unnerved and fearful,“The speed at which Emily Lawson, Julian Kelly and Steve Russell are going is bewildering.
”Streeting has made no secret of his ambition to gain more power to direct NHS England, which has been semi-independent of ministerial control as a result of then health secretary Andrew Lansley’s shake-up of the service in 2012, as part of the biggest overhaul of the NHS since it was founded,The Guardian revealed last month that thousands of jobs were going to be axed at NHS England and disclosed last week that Mackey was planning a major cull of NHS England’s senior leadership team,Further departures are expected,Mackey and Pritchard warned NHS leaders last week that the organisation is facing a possible overspend of £6,6bn in the 2025/26 financial year and that “a fundamental reset of the financial regime” will help “get a grip of this situation”.
Anthony Albanese denounces US tariffs as ‘not a friendly act’ after Donald Trump refuses exemption for Australia
Donald Trump’s decision to slap tariffs on Australian steel and aluminium is “entirely unjustified” and “not a friendly act”, Anthony Albanese says, after the Labor government failed to receive the exemption the US president had dangled in a call last month.The Australian prime minister said his government would continue pushing for an exemption to the 25% tariffs, calling the trade barriers favoured by Trump “a form of economic self-harm”, in his strongest criticism of the American president since he returned to office.“This is against the spirit of our two nations’ enduring friendship and fundamentally at odds with the benefit of our economic partnership that has delivered over more than 70 years,” Albanese said in Sydney on Wednesday.The Trump administration announced it had rejected Australia’s plea for an exemption from US tariffs on steel and aluminium imports, due to come into effect on Wednesday. Albanese stressed in his press conference that no nation, including Australia, had received a carve-out
New name but same old struggles for Boohoo
“Debenhams is back,” proclaimed the online retailing group formerly known as Boohoo. Unfortunately, its fast-fashion brands – not just Boohoo itself but also Pretty Little Thing and MAN – haven’t gone away. All are struggling badly.Since the latter collection still represents three-quarters of group revenues, new chief executive Dan Finley’s upbeat talk about an exciting future feels more than a little premature. The main market-moving news in the strategy rejig and trading update was another downgrade to the City’s profit expectations alongside a thumping £40m charge for writing down surplus stock at what are now badged as the “youth brands”
The making of Elon Musk: how did his childhood in apartheid South Africa shape him?
The billionaire and now Trump adviser grew up amid the collapse of white rule, attending an all-white school and then a more liberal oneWith an imposing double-winged redbrick main building, and school songs lifted directly from Harrow’s songbook, Pretoria boys high school is every inch the South African mirror of the English private schools it was founded in 1901 to imitate.Elon Musk, who has rapidly become one of the most powerful people in US politics, spent his final school years in the 1980s as a day pupil on the lush, tree-filled campus in South Africa’s capital, close to his father’s large detached home in Waterkloof, a wealthy Pretoria suburb shaded by purple jacaranda blossoms in spring.South Africa was rocked by uprisings as apartheid entered its dying years. In 1984, black townships across the country revolted. By 1986, the white minority government had imposed a state of emergency
Skype shutdown surfaces sweet memories: ‘I proposed marriage’
Microsoft announced on the last day of February that it would sunset Skype. By the time the death knell tolled, the video chatting software that once revolutionized communications had become a ghost of its former self. Experts chimed in with half-hearted eulogies for the platform that Microsoft spent years neglecting, yet few were surprised, and even fewer shed tears.The Guardian’s journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link
Eagles will visit White House to celebrate Super Bowl win after 2018 absence
The Philadelphia Eagles have confirmed they will visit the White House to celebrate their victory over the Kansas City Chiefs in this year’s Super Bowl.The news was announced by the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, on Tuesday, and later confirmed by an Eagles spokesperson.“I know there was a lot of fake news about an invitation that wasn’t sent or was sent, we want to correct the record: we sent an invitation, they enthusiastically accepted, and you will see them here on 28 April,” Leavitt said.The Eagles were disinvited to the White House in 2018, the last time they won the Super Bowl, after a number of players said they would drop out amid tensions over the anthem protests that had swept the NFL. Donald Trump, then in his first term as president, had attacked players who knelt during the anthem to protest against racial inequality
Tiger Woods all but certain to miss Masters after rupturing achilles at home
Tiger Woods is a near certainty to miss the Masters for just the fifth time since his debut in 1995 after confirming emergency surgery on a ruptured achilles, sustained while training at home.Woods has not played an individual event since missing the cut at the Open Championship last summer. He is a notable absentee from the Players Championship this week, with a lack of appearances in the early part of this year partly due to the death of his mother in early February.The assumption was that the 15-time major champion would tee up at Augusta National in April. However, Woods all but ruled that out with a surprising social media post on Tuesday
‘You are a monster’: victims’ loved ones share their pain as Kyle Clifford given whole-life order
Tim Miller obituary
Myra Garrett obituary
John Hunt pays tribute to daughter’s bravery as killer jailed for triple murder
NHS England to cut workforce by half as Streeting restructures
Starmer decries ‘worst of all worlds’ benefits system ahead of deep cuts