FOI 2025/1504

I am writing with a Freedom of Information request regarding your ICB’s use of recruitment agencies.
I would like to receive data on:
1. The current number of executives, managers, and team-level staff employed by your trust (separately for each staff category)
2. The number of executives, managers, and team-level staff hired by your trust using a recruitment agency in each of the last 5 fiscal years, separately for each staff group
3. The annual staff turnover rate for each staff group over the last 5 fiscal years
Please see the following definitions to help you in processing this request:
• Executives: Board-level leadership, executives, and place leaders – the ICB Chair, Chief Executive Officers, Board Members, Executive Directors, and Place Directors / Accountable Officers.
• Managers: Senior and middle management, such as heads of service, associate directors, and programme and service leads.
• Team-level staff: Professional and technical specialists, such as senior analysts, commissioning managers, finance managers, workforce specialists, digital and transformation experts, as well as team members and support staff, i.e. officers, coordinators, administrators, and business support roles.

NHS Greater Manchester (NHS GM) is the Integrated Care Board for Greater Manchester, and is responsible for making decisions about health services across Greater Manchester and in the ten boroughs and cities. NHS GM is not an NHS Trust and does not provide health care to patients.

1. NHS GM does not use the definitions for the ‘staff categories’ that have been explained within the FOI request. As such the information provided in the response is based on those roles considered the closest to the definitions within NHS GM.

Executive – 26

Manager – 338

Team Level – 1308

2. NHS GM was formed on 30^th July 2022 following the merger of the 10 former NHS Clinical Commissioning Groups of Greater Manchester. The requested data is only held following the formation of NHS GM, and is presented below. As with question 1, the same definitions are applied in respect of the categories of workers.

Note, the information in the below table principally relates to the recruitment of permanent or on payroll staff, rather than the temporary recruitment of agency staff, which have been excluded on the basis that temporary agency staff are not legally hired by NHS GM.

3. The staff groups have changed over the last 3 years and have recently changed again as we move through NHS Reform. As such NHS GM are not able to identify our staff against the categories provided, for example, NHS GM does not use mid or senior manager titles for categorisation so cannot provide data against this category.

However, NHS GM would be able to provide information regarding staff in relation to NHS Agenda for Change (AfC) banding, as it is in December 2025. Should you wish to receive this information, please let us know. Please also note we are currently going through organisational change, and the numbers will be changing monthly.