NHS starts to cut staff numbers

The community and health sectors employed 3,351 less people in April this year, down 0.3% from the peak health employment figure of 1,219,500 in March 2010. Senior manager and manager positions fell between March and April by 2.5%, with 1151 fewer posts. The government outlined plans in its recent white paper, Liberating the NHS, to cut management costs by 45%. Central functions, which includes informatics and IT, saw a 0.3% drop of 336 in the number of staff employed. A spokesperson for the NHS Information Centre told SmartHealthcare.com that a specific breakdown of figures for IT staff was not available. The NHS Information Centre numbers also revealed that scientific, therapeutic and technical staff dropped by 0.2% in April 2010 compared to March, accounting for a reduction of 326 employees. In a Guardian Careers online forum organised by SmartHealthcare.com on 21 July 2010, Mik Horswell, director of marketing and communications of the UK Council for Health Informatics Professions (UK Chip), said that NHS informatics faced "challenging times". "It is true that with the order of cost savings demanded nationally, quite separately to the white paper changes, there is risk to the whole budget for these services. I know of one such HIS (health information) service asked to release 25% of its budget without reducing services," he said. "Challenging times."