The effect on the government's shake up of the NHS "could result in the biggest transfer of employment out of the public sector since the significant denationalisation seen in the 1980s", says Kingsley Manning, of Tribal, a public sector strategy and services firm which works with doctors and PCTs.
Tens of thousands of managers and administrators could see their jobs disappear as a result of yesterday's announcement by health secretary Andrew Lansley.
Large-scale redundancies are certain because the 10 strategic health authorities (SHAs) and 152 primary care trusts (PCTs) around England are being abolished. Between them they employ 64,000 people, according to figures from the NHS information centre.
But some staff are likely to switch to jobs with the regional offices of the planned new independent NHS board which the coalition is setting up.
Lansley refused to speculate on what the eventual total might be. But informed estimates suggest that the government's determination to drastically reduce what it calls the NHS's ballooning bureaucracy means that about 30,000 people – who are currently involved in commissioning care, a function that will be taken over by groups of GPs in 2012 – may lose their jobs.
They will pay the price for Lansley's stated aim of reducing NHS management costs overall by "more than 45%".
The forthcoming white paper is explicit that the changes in the NHS "taken together ... amount to a major delayering, which will cause significant disruption and loss of jobs. It has become rapidly clear to us that the NHS simply cannot continue to afford to support the costs of the existing bureaucracy".
From Bubb's Blog
From Whitehall Watch
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