At least a dozen Integrated Care Boards have paused or postponed redundancy programmes because of a lack of funding and continuing confusion over transferring staff to other NHS organisations under government reform plans. The delays come despite an end of December deadline for ICBs to reduce their operating costs by 50%.

With the Treasury yet to agree funding for a national voluntary redundancy scheme, ICBs are understood to be facing unbudgeted bills of up £50 million each for redundancy payments and other severance costs. Several ICBs have warned they cannot fund the redundancies in this financial year while meeting the requirement to balance their budgets.

Among the ICBs pausing their job cutting programmes are North East and North Cumbria and all three ICBs in Yorkshire, as well as South West London, Frimley, and Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire West.

Five ICBs in the East Midlands—Lincolnshire, Derbyshire, Nottingham, Leicestershire and Northamptonshire—are planning to postpone all redundancies below executive level until 2026, with Kent and Medway considering following suit.

In a message to staff, North Yorkshire and Humber ICB said it was “not in a position to begin consultation or offer a voluntary redundancy scheme” until additional funding has been confirmed.

The delays make it unlikely that ICBs will meet the 31 December deadline set by NHS England. Most programmes require a consultation period of 30 to 45 days as well as time to respond to feedback and run a selection process for remaining posts.

ICBs managers who have spoken to MiP’s Healthcare Manager magazine said the funding delays were being exacerbated by continuing uncertainty over the future role of ICBs and a lack of detail in government plans for new regional offices, which will take over some ICB functions. The ‘model region blueprint’, promised by NHS England earlier this summer, had yet to appear at the time of going to press.

One manager said it was still unclear which ICB staff could be made redundant and when. “The model ICB blueprint contains a long list of roles that will be transferring to region or trusts ‘over time’. No one knows what that means,” he said. In some cases, he added, it wasn’t clear which posts the model ICB blueprint was referring to.

Sarah Walter, director of the NHS Confed’s ICS Network, warned the lack of funding for redundancies could delay the government’s reform plans.

“It is clear that if [ICBs] cannot get redundancy schemes underway soon then they will not be able to make the savings planned for this financial year,” she said. “The knock-on effect of this will be the NHS cannot balance its books and the government’s ambitious reforms will be delayed. It is vital that funding for patient-facing services is not impacted by redundancy programmes.” //