THOUSANDS of NHS jobs are set be cut after the Treasury approved a £1 billion redundancies fund.

The government announced plans in March to slash headcount by around 50 per cent across NHS England and the Department of Health.

The cuts, confirmed today, are expected to impact around 18,000 administrative roles.

The government said it expects to bring NHS England back into the Department of Health and Social Care within two years, which will “put an end to the duplication of two organisations doing the same job.”

It said that the cuts would slash “unnecessary bureaucracy” and raise £1bn a year by the end of the Parliament.

This will be “redirected to front-line patient care,” the government said, suggesting the savings could fund an extra 116,000 hip and knee operations.

It is understood that the Treasury refused additional funding over the NHS’s current settlement, but has instead permitted the service to overspend its budget this year to fund the redundancies and pay it back over time.

NHS England boss Jim Mackey said the cuts would “reduce unnecessary bureaucracy that slows us down and gets in the way of the improving care.”

But sector union Unison’s head of health Helga Pile called the process a “shambles,” adding: “Demoralised staff have had months of uncertainty, with the threat of job losses hanging over them.

“Large-scale redundancies like these should never be callously dismissed as cuts to ‘bureaucracy.’

“In a few short months, the NHS will lose thousands of staff whose skills and experience will continue to be needed.

“That’s because these cuts are being rushed through ahead of proper decisions being made about how best to run services.”

British Medical Association chair of council Dr Tom Dolphin said: “To suggest these projected savings could fund an extra 116,000 hip and knee operations may well be the case, but we do not have enough surgeons, anaesthetists and other theatre staff, or operating space fit for purpose, to meet existing demand.

“We need to see the money spent filling gaps on rotas, creating much-needed training jobs for resident doctors, and restoring the value of staff salaries to show that our worth is recognised.”