London: Hospitals in the United Kingdom may be forced to lay off over 100,000 employees as part of a large-scale cost-cutting reorganization ordered by Health Secretary Wes Streeting and the new Chief Executive of the National Health Service (NHS), James Mackey.

According to Namibia Press Agency, the NHS Confederation, an organization representing the trusts, told The Guardian that Mackey's order to all 215 NHS trusts to axe their corporate staff, such as HR, finance, and communications, by 50% by the end of 2025, may leave some trusts down between 3% and 11% of their entire workforce.

Given that the 215 trusts employ 1.37 million people, this percentage indicates that the reorganization could leave 41,000-150,700 people jobless. NHS Confederation CEO Matthew Taylor also told the newspaper that the government has recommended UK health executives to establish a "national redundancy fund" to compensate for the looming job losses.

"The scale and pace of what has been asked of [health leaders] to downsize is staggering and leaves them fearful of being able to find the right balance between improving performance and implementing the reforms needed to put the NHS on a sustainable footing. They have told us that unless the Treasury creates a national redundancy fund to cover these job losses, any savings the government hopes to make risk being eroded at best and completely wiped out at worst," Taylor said.

In addition, the NHS Confederation noted that some trust leaders plan to spend as much as 12 million pounds ($15.3 million) on job cuts this year. However, one leader told the newspaper that their trust was not planning a redundancy program "as it will be unaffordable," but instead will rely on natural employee turnover to offset staff losses.

The NHS has been suffering from a large deficit of health workers for years, with more and more people leaving the profession over the overwhelming workload, rising costs and lack of training. This situation was further exacerbated by almost two years of industrial action by medical staff. According to the health service, the number of people waiting for care in England reached a 16-year high of 7.75 million in August 2023.

The health secretary ordered an independent investigation into the state of the national health care in July. Its conclusions will form the basis of Prime Minister Keir Starmer's 10-year plan to overhaul the NHS.