Hello Dave
I don’t agree with this approach in principle, but if it saves any jobs its worth looking at.
No one believes that there will be no redundancies, compulsory or otherwise.
For example it has been mooted that the savings required within my Trust are about £30 million per year. An incremental freeze may save up to about 250 posts, but we could still face losing another 1500.
A number of measures and approaches are being made to reduce expenditure on a national and local level "guaranteeing no reduction in patient services". Quite frankly I find that difficult to believe. Year in, year out, the biggest uncontrolled expenditure in the NHS is the drug overspend, and the prices we pay to the large pharmaceutical companies. Possibly renegotiating that bill on a national basis would help along with stopping any more PFI projects.
Staff are an easy target, any Manager who doesn’t realise that a shortfall in staffing must be made good through contract or agency, costing ££££'s more needs to wake up.
And you are right in your assumptions concerning strategic reviews of services, and what this means on the shop floor.
Quite frankly the going is getting tougher
