NHS mental health trust plans £25m in cuts to jobs and services

About the role

East London NHS Foundation Trust (ELFT) is planning a significant restructuring involving the redesign of multiple key services and the reduction of its workforce to address a £24.97m financial deficit. This follows NHS England's mandate for all 205 trusts to balance their budgets.

Services affected

• Child and adolescent mental health care (CAMHS)
• Talking therapies
• Addiction support
• Adult mental health crisis services
• Community programmes (including those for ethnic minorities and economically disadvantaged groups)
• Fothergill ward – a 20-bed intermediate care ward at East Ham Care Centre, scheduled to close on 21 September (currently not accepting new referrals)

Workforce impact

• Approximately 330 roles to be cut from the 6,000-strong workforce (around 5%)
• Reductions will be achieved through redundancies and removal of posts
• Mark Dunne, the trust's lead Unite official, has lost his job in what the union describes as "a sham redundancy"

Concerns raised

• Potential increased waiting times for under-18s and adults needing psychological treatment
• Risk of patients being forced to seek private care to obtain timely help
• Questions about the trust's transparency, as the 23 July finance committee report to the board did not mention the cuts or savings target despite weeks of planning
• Lack of public consultation on many of the proposals
• No risk assessment has been undertaken regarding impact on public health, public safety, and health equalities – the trust states these are "indicative savings proposals at an early stage" and no cuts will move to implementation without passing through quality impact assessment

Responses

• Unite union (Richard Munn, national officer for health): Described the cuts as "unfathomable and unacceptable", warning they will lead to "exponentially greater costs to the public purse and lead to lives being destroyed"
• Unite: Preparing to ballot members over potential strike action
• Apsana Begum MP (Poplar and Limehouse): Wrote to CEO Lorraine Sunduza expressing serious concern and questioning whether the trust has undertaken a risk assessment
• Keep Our NHS Public (Dr Tony O'Sullivan, co-chair): Noted the contradiction between ELFT needing to cut £25m while the Department of Health and NHS England give £2.5bn to private firms to expand NHS treatment capacity
• ELFT spokesperson: Stated the trust has a responsibility to live within its means, that the approach is "clinically led and focused on meeting the needs of our service users", and they are working with trade unions and partners to identify effective and sustainable ways to deliver efficiencies while protecting quality and safety