East London NHS Trust to cut 330 jobs and close Fothergill ward in £25m savings plan

Residents in Newham and other east London boroughs will lose access to mental health services as the East London NHS Foundation Trust moves forward with a £25m budget reduction plan. The trust confirmed it will close the 20-bed Fothergill ward at its East Ham care centre on 21 September and eliminate 330 posts, approximately 5% of its workforce.

The cuts target ten key services, including child and adolescent mental health care, talking therapies, and addiction support. Community programmes for ethnic minorities and low-income groups will also be affected. The trust serves Newham, Hackney, Tower Hamlets, Luton, and Bedford.

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No mention of cuts in July board report

The trust’s finance committee presented a report to the board on 23 July that did not reference the £25m savings target or the proposed service reductions. The omission has raised questions about transparency, as the Guardian reported the cuts were planned weeks earlier.

ELFT stated the proposals remain at an early stage. A spokesperson said, "No cuts will move to implementation without passing through quality impact assessment." The trust added that the measures are necessary to balance its budget, as required by NHS England.

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Union warns of longer waits and tragic outcomes

Cutting mental health services will lead to exponentially greater costs to the public purse and lead to lives being destroyed.

Richard Munn, Unite national health officer

Unite, the trade union representing health workers, condemned the cuts. Richard Munn, the union’s national health officer, said the reductions would force patients with acute mental health needs to wait longer for care. He warned the consequences could be "tragic, life-changing and irreversible."

Unite is preparing to ballot its members at ELFT for potential strike action. The union claims the trust’s lead official, Mark Dunne, lost his job in what Munn described as a "sham redundancy," reflecting the employer’s "cold, uncaring nature."

MP raises concerns over risk assessment

Apsana Begum, the Labour MP for Poplar and Limehouse, wrote to ELFT’s chief executive, Lorraine Sunduza, expressing serious concerns. Begum questioned whether the trust had conducted a risk assessment, given the potential impact on "public health, public safety and health equalities."

Begum said she could not see how cuts of this scale could be implemented without creating "a substantial variation in how services are accessed by patients." She noted that few of the plans had been announced for consultation, despite the scale of the proposed savings and job losses.

Campaign group warns of private care surge

The campaign group Keep Our NHS Public warned that patients may be forced to pay for private care to avoid longer NHS waiting times. Dr Tony O’Sullivan, the group’s co-chair, said the cuts would push some of those in dire need of help toward private treatment.

O’Sullivan highlighted a contradiction in NHS funding. While ELFT is required to make £25m in cuts, the Department of Health and NHS England are allocating £2.5bn to private firms to expand their capacity to treat NHS patients.

What happens next

ELFT stated that all proposed cuts will undergo a quality impact assessment before implementation. The trust is currently working with trade unions, staff, and partners to identify the most sustainable way to deliver the required efficiencies while protecting care quality and safety.

Unite’s ballot for strike action is expected to take place in the coming weeks. The closure of Fothergill ward on 21 September will mark the first tangible reduction in services under the savings plan.