More than 500 hospital staff have applied for voluntary redundancy at Devon’s largest NHS trust, many more than a target set in order to deliver planned service cuts.
The Royal Devon University Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust convened an extraordinary board meeting in January solely to discuss what it described as its “financial deterioration”.
At the time it said it expected a £44 million deficit by the end of the 2025-26 financial year despite already agreeing significant budget cuts. The board heard that the trust had fallen short of a £47 million savings target by £25.5 million.
Trust representatives then told a meeting of Devon County Council’s health and adult care scrutiny committee later that month that it would, among other measures, introduce a redundancy programme to “reshape” its workforce of almost 16,000.
The committee’s following meeting, held on Monday this week, heard that the trust’s 2025-26 year-end position had left it with a £91.2 million deficit before it received £26.9 million in deficit support funding from NHS England.
Royal Devon University Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust CEO Sam Higginson told the committee that more than 500 staff had applied for voluntary redundancy in a scheme that had targeted a workforce reduction of 300-400 staff.
He said that applications were now closed and that the trust was “working through them to understand where we can support them and where we can’t because of the need to run clinical services”.
The trust operates hospitals across the county including Exeter Community Hospital in Whipton, Nightingale Hospital in Sowton and the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital in Heavitree and Wonford.
