The chancellor's decision is a setback for the health secretary, who had been lobbying behind the scenes in Whitehall for extra money to pay off 18,000 personnel who are losing their jobs. The Treasury has instead allowed the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) to overspend its allotted budget by about 1bn this financial year. But this is on the understanding that it will have less money in 2026-27 and no new cash overall. Streeting had spent months trying to persuade the Treasury to grant additional funding to enable the NHS's 42 integrated care boards to start slimming down their role.
Around 1,500 Greater London Authority (GLA) staff have been warned of possible redundancies due to a major budget shortfallthe first such warning in the GLA's 25-year historyamid fears of losing millions in government funding. Factors such as the end of post-Brexit parachute payments, changes to business rates, and uncertain council tax revenues have created a potential funding gap, forcing the GLA to plan for all scenarios and possible cuts to staff posts.
TikTok's Chinese owners have been accused of bare-faced union busting by announcing hundreds of layoffs just a week before staff were due to vote on unionisation. The social media platform's Beijing-based owner ByteDance announced on Friday that hundreds of staff in its London office would be made redundant, with their roles being reallocated to offices across Europe and outsourced to third-party providers.