Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many NHS trusts have informed his Department that they plan to reduce the number of staff employed for non-corporate functions.

The Department has made no specific estimate of the change in contracted National Health Service staff, bank and agency staff, corporate functions staff, or those in other functions in NHS trusts in England over the 2025/26 financial year, beyond the position outlined in the 2025/26 NHS Priorities and Operational Planning Guidance. This guidance set out that integrated care boards and NHS trusts must:

- reduce agency expenditure, as far as possible, as part of optimising costs and productivity. As a minimum, all systems are expected to deliver a 30% reduction based on current spending, with further reductions over this Parliament;

- reduce bank use, with all systems expected to deliver a minimum 10% reduction. Bank rates should be optimised as far as possible; and

- conduct a robust review of establishment growth and reduce spend on support functions to April 2022 levels.

The Department and NHS England will continue to work with systems to develop plans that are affordable within the allocations set, exhausting all opportunities to improve productivity and tackle waste, and take decisions on how to prioritise resources to best meet the health needs of their local population.

The Department does not hold information on the number of NHS trusts who may be planning to reduce the number of staff employed in non-corporate functions.