The NHS trust responsible for hospitals in Oldham, Bury, Rochdale and Salford is rolling out a new redundancy scheme and freezing recruitment to cut a huge chunk of its workforce and curb costs.

The Northern Care Alliance (NCA) Foundation NHS Trust, which runs Royal Oldham Hospital, Salford Royal, Fairfield General Hospital in Bury and Rochdale Infirmary, is reportedly launching several cut-backs in a bid to meet financial expectations in 2024-25.

According to a report by the Health Service Journal (HSJ) this includes the launch of new redundancy schemes as well as plans to freeze recruitment for non-clinical staff

The trust has confirmed to The Oldham Times through a statement from the NCA's chief of people that it is "looking at ways to reduce our spend and improve our finances" and proposals "do not include clinical roles who work directly with patients".

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The NCA's internal papers, seen by the HSJ, reportedly make way for cuts to 14 per cent of its corporate workforce and 'imply' more than 100 posts could be removed.

This includes quality improvement, patient experience and complaints and infection prevention and control, though the NCA says the measures will not impact clinical staff who work directly with patients.

HSJ said the internal documents noted corporate services in the trust had grown by 20 per cent since 2019 and added: "Corporate services must reduce by circa 14 per cent in both size and value and unfortunately this will mean that we will need to review a wide range of services and roles, with the aim of reducing the size of the service and the number of colleagues employed in these services.”

The news comes as the Northern Care Alliance raked in almost £1.6m in income from charging patients, visitors and staff to use its hospital car parks last year, but forked out almost £2m in damages for cancer misdiagnosis and delays in the last five years.

The hospital trust was also told its services must improve with staffing levels and the morale of hardworking NHS staff highlighted as areas of concern in its most recent Care Quality Commission (CQC) inspection carried out in 2022.

According to the HSJ, the NCA is expected to report a deficit of £71m for 2023-24 - an estimated £40m worse than forecast.

Nicky Clarke, Chief of People at the Northern Care Alliance NHS Foundation Trust, said: “We are one of a number of NHS Trusts that are looking at ways to reduce our spend and improve our finances.

"We have started a formal consultation with colleagues affected by proposals within the corporate services of our Trust.

"The proposed changes do not include clinical roles who work directly with patients and service users.”

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