Hospital workers gathered at the Hills Road roundabout outside Addenbrooke’s Hospital this afternoon (04/06) to protest against planned job cuts that could see over 500 roles axed across Cambridge University Hospitals (CUH).

The demonstration, organised by Unite’s Cambridge Medical branch, highlighted concerns over job cuts targeting “support functions” including porters, maintenance staff, plumbers, engineers, and administrative workers.

The cuts follow an NHS England mandate issued earlier this year, which requires trusts to slash spending on support services to April 2022 levels by November 2025.

“These huge cuts across NHS trusts in Cambridgeshire are a blunt tool that risks damaging patient care, quality and waiting times,” said Unite general secretary Sharon Graham.

Craig Jamieson, Unite’s lead representative at Addenbrooke’s, warned that staff are already stretched thin. “Already, many of my colleagues work unpaid overtime, and stress and mental health problems are major reasons why staff go off sick,” he said. His own role in clinical engineering is reportedly among those at risk.

The cuts loom as demographic projections show that Cambridge’s population is expected to grow by 18% between 2022 and 2041. This means hospitals will need to treat significantly more patients, including the student population, with nearly 5% fewer staff, according to Unite.

Unite expressed concerns that clinical staff may be forced to take on administrative tasks previously handled by support workers, stretching remaining staff further.

Unite regional officer Richard Gates described the cuts as “completely against the grain of the government’s commitment to invest in the NHS,” warning that remaining workers would be “expected to pick up this extra work, at a time when they are already maxed out”.

The union has pledged to continue fighting the job cuts. This demonstration marks “only the beginning” of the campaign, organisers said.

A CUH spokesperson noted that the mandate to return staffing to April 2022 levels requires the elimination of 500 CUH posts “not delivering direct clinical care,” explaining that the job reductions are part of nationally mandated spending cuts and that the CUH workforce has grown by 1,500 jobs in the last two years.

The spokesperson said: “We are taking all possible steps to minimise redundancies, through natural turnover by not recruiting to posts when staff leave, holding vacancies empty and a mutually agreed resignation scheme.

“We appreciate it is a worrying and uncertain time for many colleagues working in the NHS, and we have put in place a range of measures to support staff during this process,” they added.

“Over the past three years we have invested in additional staff, and our focus on productivity and efficiency means we delivered more than £53m of savings in the last financial year,” they stated, continuing: “Taking these difficult but necessary decisions will help us manage our budget in the coming year and in the long term, while continuing to meet the needs of our patients now and in the future. Throughout this process, we will ensure that patient safety remains our absolute priority.”