Health chief warns new Thames Valley NHS board will mean ‘large number of redundancies’
The boss says major staff changes are ahead as the £5.6 billion healthcare board prepares for launch.
The creation of a new NHS board covering the Thames Valley will lead to significant job losses, according to the region’s top health executive.
Nick Broughton, the Chief Executive of the BOB and Frimley Integrated Care Boards, said the new Thames Valley Integrated Care Board will mean “a large number of redundancies” as part of a drive to cut running costs by about half.
Speaking at a joint health overview and scrutiny committee, he described the upcoming changes as the biggest shake-up the NHS has ever seen.
He said maintaining staff morale during the transition would be a major challenge and that much work remains before the formal launch of the board in April 2026.
The new Thames Valley Integrated Care Board will take over responsibility for deciding how to use a £5.6 billion budget to improve services for approximately 2.6 million people in Buckinghamshire, Berkshire and Oxfordshire.
Broughton said the board would replace existing arrangements that he described as “an artificial construct”, and would cover an area “that makes sense” to local people and matches other regional boundaries.
Broughton told the committee, “The decrease in running costs is significant, about 50 per cent, and therefore we are looking at a large number of redundancies. So maintaining the morale of the organisation at the same time as delivering for today and planning for tomorrow is a significant challenge.”
He said the new executive team for the board will be smaller than the current BOB executive team.
The NHS is currently consulting on recruiting for the new executive group, with the team expected to operate under a reduced budget, based on £19 per head of population.
Broughton said, “I do think there is a huge amount of potential for the new Thames Valley ICB. The very fact that we will be covering geography that makes sense, that people recognise… will enable us to have a good deal more traction than perhaps we have had historically.”
The board’s aim will be to improve health outcomes and deliver services for the population of the Thames Valley region.