Health authorities may partner up to save money

At a meeting of the Northamptonshire Integrated Car Partnership the boss of the Northamptonshire Integrated Care Board, Toby Sanders, said his organisation and the Rutland, Leicestershire and Leicester Integrated Care Board (LLR ICB) had submitted a proposal to the NHS England about joining forces.

Health Minister, Wes Streeting, announced a massive shake-up of the NHS this year and the 42 ICBs across the country have been tasked with making massive savings, as much as 50 per cent to their budgets.

At the meeting held in Northampton, Mr Sanders explained that the reduction in running costs would likely eliminate about a third of its staff by the December 2025 deadline.

He added that the ‘only way’ to sustain that scale of running costs would be to work much more closely with colleagues to the north.

Mr Sanders said: “I’m really committed to supporting the brilliant staff we have and we’ve got to do it in the best way.

"At the moment, I’ve got 500 staff that are sat frankly terrified about whether they’re going to be able to pay their mortgage or help their children through university.

“For me, my job here is to lead us through this as quickly as we can and get some direction.”

According to a head count taken in March 2025, there were just over 200 staff at the Northamptonshire ICB and around 330 in Leicestershire and Rutland.

In total, £16.7M in savings need to be made from the areas’ combined £53M running costs.

With each ICB being asked to cut running costs by around 30 per cent, redundancies are likely to be in the hundreds.

The Leicestershire-Northamptonshire-Rutland (LNR) plans would not constitute a formal merger, but would see single management teams established across the region and the sharing of some functions to reduce duplication of work.

Leicestershire, Rutland and Northamptonshire already have common agreements, with all the hospitals in Leicestershire and Northants, led by the same chief executive, Richard Mitchell.

Angela Hillery is also the chief executive of the community and mental health services in Leicestershire, Rutland and Northamptonshire.

The chief executive of the LLR ICB, Caroline Trevithick, has left recently.

At the most recent board meeting, the Northants partnership was not mentioned, but at a Rutland Health and Wellbeing board meeting ICB deputy chief operating officer, Debra Mitchell, said some of the work currently done by the ICB would move to the local authority and other providers.

When asked about the Northamptonshire partnership, the LLR ICB gave the following statement: “The ICB executive team is working closely with colleagues across the East Midlands to consider the next steps.

"Discussions so far have focused on the future ICB model, the significant savings required based on per-head population costs, and the potential development of a cluster model as a planning assumption.

“The final details around the emerging clusters across the East Midlands are still being worked through.

"As these are formally finalised, the national team will confirm the final cluster alignments.”

Leicestershire hospitals are being redeveloped and reorganised as part of a £450M investment.