NHS Shake-Up Turns Into Chaos After £1B Funding Blunder Leaves Staff in Limbo

Earlier this year, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Health Secretary Wes Streeting unveiled a bold plan — scrap NHS England to cut red tape and pump an extra £1.1 billion straight into frontline care. It sounded like a win for patients, but now the whole thing is teetering on the edge of chaos.

According to The Times, the government never actually put aside the cash needed to make it happen — specifically, the estimated £600 million to £1 billion required to lay off 12,500 staff.

The 42 Integrated Care Boards (ICBs), which handle payments to local NHS services across England, were told they had to slash their management budgets in half by December. The idea was that extra funds would be provided to cover the redundancies. But here’s the problem: that “redundancy pot” reportedly doesn’t exist.

As a result, ICBs are now refusing to make the cuts, grinding the plan to a halt. Daniel Elkeles, chief executive of NHS Providers, told The Times: “We mustn’t expect redundancies to be funded from money that was supposed to be spent on patient care.”

NHS England is reportedly gearing up to ask the Treasury for the money, but it may not arrive until April 2026 — the start of the next financial year.

In the meantime, managers are warning the fallout will hit patients. “There is no doubt this will cause disruption that affects patients,” one manager said. “It will mean delays in decisions being made. In some areas like safeguarding, which is being really badly affected, it could have serious consequences and is a huge risk for patients.”

Another manager didn’t mince words: “It feels like a total bin fire at the moment. I have known for weeks my role will be deleted and we have told other staff they will lose their jobs, and yet we’ve been told the national team is in chaos and there is no funding agreed to pay for it. But they have asked us not to tell the staff, who are all just left in limbo. This whole process is creating so much waste and inefficiency for the NHS, which is completely ironic.”

For now, the Treasury has stayed silent on the reports, and NHS staff facing possible redundancy remain in the dark. With patient services, job security, and billions of pounds at stake, critics say the government’s “streamlining” plan is looking less like a cost-cutting masterstroke and more like a bureaucratic train wreck.