NHS England: Government abolishes quango that “delivered less care at huge cost”

NHS England is being abolished and its functions will be taken over by the Department of Health and Social Care to reduce duplication and bureaucracy, direct “hundreds of millions of pounds” to frontline services, and empower staff to deliver better care for patients, the government has announced.

The changes signal an end to the reorganisation of the NHS brought by Andrew Lansley’s reforms in 2012, which “created burdensome layers of bureaucracy without any clear lines of accountability,” said the government this week.

Its announcement came just three days after it said that staffing at NHS England was to be halved and the same day it said that integrated care boards were expected to cut their costs by half.1

Latest NHS performance data, also released on 13 March, showed that 58.9% of patients were seen within 18 weeks in January 2025, against the government’s interim target, to be achieved by March 2026, of 65% of patients being seen within 18 weeks. The waiting list for treatment currently stands at …