Healthcare recruitment agencies were warned by Nicola Hopper, national resourcing manager at Bupa Care Services that recruiters have to provide `value for money`.

The Recruitment and Employment Confederation also stated that recruiters have an important role to play in providing a cost effective solution.

With George Osbourne announcing £6 billion cuts next week, there is an emphasis on quality of services being maintained within the Public Sector, with George Osbourne adding that they believe this can be achieved without affecting frontline services.

There is however a lot of contradicting information out there, that suggest that cuts will happen to frontline services and even the Royal College of Nursing, on data they have obtained from 26 trusts, suggests that 5,600 posts could be in jeopardy but worst case this figure could be as much as 36,000 NHS staff.

Union also warned that the NHS has put aside £2bn, to be used for redundancy pay-offs that will occur. Unison claims that the guidance given by the NHS framework for 2010/11, states that trusts should set aside 2% of their budgets for any one off commitments. Health Secretary Andrew Lansley added that trusts which manage to save this 2% figure can decide how to spend it and this does include redundancies.

My analysis of all this, is that although the ConDem are making the right noises, using phases such as `efficiency cuts` and frontline services unaffected. I think it is clear especially within the NHS that job cuts are inevitable and that frontline staff is an area that will be affected too. This does however mean that recruitment agencies will be used to maintain a level of service required, however like I wrote at the beginning of this blog, there will be a much larger emphasis on the quality of service and providing value for money.