Niall Dickson CBE and Roy Lilley with their latest guest Rob Webster CBE
For this next edition of In The Loop podcast Niall and Roy come together with Rob Webster one of the most prominent NHS managers and a huge advocate of integration. Rob heads up the West Yorkshire and Harrogate Health and Care Partnership an integrated care system. And like every other system in the country he is grappling with a huge financial challenge, a big reorganisation, redundancies and staff threatening industrial action. So how is he managing as he faces a 45% reduction is his workforce and key staff in an angry mood?
Rob reveals this is the most frustrating period in his 36 year career with enormous pressure on everyone and he admits it is causing harm to his staff. But he insists it will not distract from the work. While he acknowledges the difficult financial position, he says the transition is incredibly difficult, supports the aims of the reorganisation and believes that close working relationships between health, local authorities and the third sector can and will deliver meaningful change.
He says the NHS must put its people first and argues that staff have quite rightly become dissatisfied and that the job of NHS leaders is to do something about this. He notes how painful it has been to see the attrition of standards over the past fifteen years but suggests this can be a period where the NHS has to recover and transform services.
Niall and Roy remain concerned about what can be achieved given all the headwinds but here again is a leader who says they can make progress.
This podcast was recorded before the government announced the go-ahead for widespread redundancies in ICBs and NHSE. Speaking at a Providers conference on 12th November the Secretary of State said;
‘...Funding arrangements [for voluntary redundancies] have been agreed with HM Treasury and will be from within the existing funding settlement. We will not be cutting any investment to the NHS frontline. Further detail will come forward in the coming weeks.’
It is widely anticipated that NHS organisations will be permitted to overspend budgets in the current year and the amounts reclaimed over subsequent years through efficiency savings.
Click on the image below to listen to the podcast
