THE council’s deputy leader has warned that the restructuring of health services across Greater Manchester has been a ‘backward step’ and that the NHS in the city region could be facing a £1.9bn deficit over the next five years.

Cllr Keith Cunliffe said the newly-formed NHS Greater Manchester Integrated Care Board (GM ICB) currently has a deficit of £500mand that if ‘we stay as we are’ it could quadruple.

He is also the authority’s portfolio holder for adult social care and was addressing the borough's health and social care scrutiny committee.

READ > Multi-million-pound redevelopment of college approved

Cllr Cunliffe said the £170m delegated to Wigan ‘pays for everything’. “But the actual commissioning for Wigan hospital [the Royal Albert Edward Infirmary] and other things like mental health services is done by the GM ICB,” he said.

“The money flows into different parts of the services. GM ICB has a deficit of about £500m. If we stay as we are in five years it will be £1.9bn.

“I’m not convinced by this new system. I think it’s taken us backward. We’ve not got the opportunity to work with partners to the extent that we did and we don’t have control.”

Cllr Cunliffe said there were hundreds of thousands of vacancies in social care across the UK, but ‘there is no workforce plan’.

He said the objective is to address the issue locally via the Wrightington, Wigan and Leigh Teaching Hospitals, the Greater Manchester Mental Health Trust, Wigan council and Wigan and Leigh College where the plan is to develop and health and social care academy.

“The health and social care sector is going to be a major employer over the next 10 to 20 years as the population gets older,” he said.

“This is about training our young people to go into health care as a career. We are doing what we can in Wigan to get people into a wide variety of jobs in the NHS.

“There is a range of jobs and opportunities and we need to be making them available to our young people.

“If it is not happening nationally, we will do what we can locally.”

Cllr Cunliffe’s comments were backed up by a report to the committee by Mel Maguinness, Wigan’s deputy place-based lead.

She wrote: “The whole Greater Manchester health and care system is under significant financial, performances and sustainability pressures.

“The current deficit is forecast to quadruple in the next five to 10 years if we do not collectively focus on preventing future ill health and long-term conditions.”

The changes implemented by the Health and Care Act in 2022 were designed to promote ‘collaboration and partnership’ working between health and care services.

This led to the scrapping of the clinical commission groups (CCGs) in the 10 boroughs across Greater Manchester, to be replaced by the GM ICB, which assumed control over the former CCG budgets and all decision-making.

Those budgets and powers were delegated to the ‘locality boards’ which in Wigan’s case is the Healthier Wigan Partnership (HWP) System Board – now a committee of the GM ICB.

Sitting on the System Board are two representatives from the following groups: Wrightington, Wigan and Leigh Teaching Hospitals, Greater Manchester Mental Health Foundation Trust, GP/primary care networks, Wigan council, the voluntary sector and NHS GM.