Health campaigners urge councillors to speak out about ‘savage’ NHS cuts

Keep Our NHS Public campaigners outside the Town Hall, joined by Cllr Claudia Turbet-Delof (far left). Image: Courtesy Marion McAlpine

Health campaigners have blasted Hackney Council for “re-arranging the chairs on the Titanic” as they warn of “disastrous” NHS cuts.

Keep Our NHS Public (KONP) last week protested outside the Town Hall before demanding that the borough’s health scrutiny committee pushes back against spending cuts.

According to health news outlet The Lowdown, the North East London (NEL) Integrated Care Board (ICB), the body responsible for planning and commissioning healthcare in Hackney, has a savings target of £289 million as of January 2025.

“The NHS calls these ‘efficiency savings’ but they are actually savage cuts,” a KONP representative told the Citizen.

The group wants councillors to make known the “cumulative impact of local cuts to NHS services at the national level”.

They pointed to a report published last September by trade union Unite that claimed the East London NHS Foundation Trust (ELFT), which provides primary care, mental and community health services, was looking to cut spending by £29m.

Further analysis from The Lowdown found that the £13.6 billion promised by the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) for 2025/26 was still shy of the NHS’s estimated £13.7 billion maintenance backlog.

While NEL ICB’s January report does not declare any ‘savings targets’, it does make clear that health service partnerships in Hackney and other boroughs are facing an £85.7 million budget deficit.

The board’s financial plan for 2023/24 did, however, include a target to achieve “efficiencies” of £86 million.

In November, the ICB also announced it was undertaking a 30 per cent ‘running cost allowance cut’.

Though this usually refers to non-clinical spending, as opposed to frontline care, it could still lead to higher workloads for managers and administrators, potentially impacting delivery.

During the meeting, NEL primary care lead, Dr Kirsten Brown, said GPs’ ‘enhanced contracts’ had in recent years received a funding boost “invested directly into workforces”.

While this led to better outcomes for the borough, the contracts are now up for review and the ICB may soon decide to decommission some services.

It was “very unlikely” the borough would soon receive any more money, she said, warning that “we’ve got to hope that we don’t have any investment taken out of primary care”.

While Dr Brown said she was unaware of any other planned cuts to primary care “at present”, her words did little to soothe KONP’s unease.

“Undoubtedly, there are going to be other services that are reduced, reorganised, with fewer staff and access as a result of cuts implemented over the coming months,” said member Carol Ackroyd.

But committee chair, Cllr Ben Hayhurst (Labour, Hackney Downs), cautioned the group that the “non-partisan or political” scrutiny commission was not the right forum – even as he challenged the notion that cuts were a certainty.

Pointing to the Labour government’s cash injection into the NHS, he said: “There’s £21 billion [from] the Autumn Budget going into health services. That is nearly three to four per cent more than there was.

“North East London has a growing population, so in actual fact, even in the last few years when there have been cuts, more money has still been coming into the borough but you’ve got to meet that with a population increase.

“As far as I’m concerned, next year and the year after, more money will actually be going in. There might be certain services that are decommissioned or reorganized, but that is how the system works.”

He added: “We look into this constantly […] but if you find a service change that we don’t know about, please let us know.”

For KONP, this was not the clarity they had sought.

Spokesperson Marion Macalpine told the Citizen: “These are pre-planned NHS England cuts under the Tories which have been continued by Labour with disastrous effects, and need to be met by our councillors through a political response.

“Instead, the scrutiny committee accepts detailed presentations from NHS managers, most of which are emptied of meaning, and many similar to what was proposed 20 years ago – especially on obesity and on social care.

“Faced with numerous crises like corridor care et cetera, it looks like re-arranging the chairs on the Titanic.”

KONP also took the opportunity to renew earlier criticism of the council’s controversial decision to scrap the “very successful” falls prevention service.

The next meeting of the North East London ICB is scheduled for 26 March.