The Scottish Government has announced plans to radically restructure the NHS, replacing Scotland’s 14 territorial health boards with two new ‘Strategic Health Boards’ covering the west and east of the country.

The shake-up was announced by first minister John Swinney (pictured) on 2 September, as part of the SNP administrations five-year ‘programme for government‘. Ministers described the changes as the most significant structural reform of NHS Scotland since devolution in 1999.

The government claims the new structure will simplify the NHS, reduce duplication and make accountability clearer, while improving access to care and tackling inequalities created by existing health board boundaries. Swinney said there would be no compulsory redundancies among NHS staff as a result of the reforms.

The plans—announced without any consultation with health unions—also include further reforms to Scotland’s special health boards, which provide national services such as ambulances, training and public health, alongside wider changes to public services and social care.

At the time of writing, there were few details about how the reforms will work and ministers had not disclosed how many NHS jobs could be affected or how much money the reforms are expected to save.

Commenting on the announcement, MiP’s national officer for Scotland, Claire Pullar, said: “There are still many questions about how the changes will be implemented and what they will mean for staff, services and patients. Cutting jobs or reducing management capacity cannot be allowed to become a substitute for delivering more efficient public services.”

The union called on the Scottish Government to learn lessons from the ongoing NHS reorganisation in England and engage early with staff and unions, “to avoid repeating the same mistakes”.

NHS reforms in England had “created significant disruption for services and the people managing them due to a lack of meaningful consultation, poor communication and cutting headcount before service design”, Pullar said.