Half of NHS South Yorkshire health board jobs set to go as major cost-cutting plan announced
The region’s Integrated Care Board has been ordered to cut costs
More than 370 South Yorkshire NHS staff face redundancy as the region’s Integrated Care Board (ICB) is ordered to slash its running costs by more than half before the end of this year.
The board, which is responsible for planning and buying NHS services across Barnsley, Doncaster, Rotherham and Sheffield, must cut annual operating costs from £61.7m to £30.2m, a 51 per cent reduction, by December 2025. The changes come after the Government ordered NHS England and the Department of Health and Social Care to deliver £9bn in efficiency savings by the end of the current Parliament.
Under national reforms, ICBs will shift their focus to planning and overseeing NHS services, and move away from directly providing some patient services.
This means responsibility for arranging ongoing care for people with serious health needs, protecting vulnerable patients, and supporting GPs with safe prescribing is expected to be passed to other organisations in the future.
For South Yorkshire, the shake-up means the workforce will shrink from 800 full-time equivalent roles to 425, a loss of almost half of all posts. Leaders have confirmed that redundancies will be unavoidable.
Weekly staff briefings are taking place, with managers stressing support for staff welfare during the process. A new organisational structure is now being developed, and the ICB says it will keep “a strong place focus” by ensuring senior staff are embedded in each local area.
While other parts of England are merging their ICBs to save money, South Yorkshire will remain a “standalone” board, one of just 12 in the country, though it will explore sharing some functions with neighbouring areas.
The financial squeeze comes despite an average three per cent real-terms increase to the NHS England budget over the next three years. The Government says extra cash will go towards technology upgrades, expanding GP training, more urgent dentist appointments, and growing mental health support in schools.
However, NHS South Yorkshire still needs to find £270m in efficiencies across the ICB and local NHS trusts this year, around 6.9 per cent of its total system budget. The plan includes £79m in deficit support from NHS England.
The ICB says it remains committed to improving health outcomes, tackling inequalities, and delivering value for money, but admits the new approach will rely heavily on commissioning services rather than providing them directly.