16.04.11
Agenda for Change to avoid huge redundancy bill
The Department of Health is preparing to tie clinical commissioning groups to a pre-existing agreement with trade unions to ensure PCT staff who lose their jobs and are offered new contracts cannot refuse the offer and claim redundancy, it has emerged.
Of 35,000 administerial and managerial staff currently working in PCTs, set to be abolished, at least one third are forecast to lose their jobs. Around 10,000 of these are expected to be offered new posts within CCGs, meaning the redundancy bill would only be £800m.
But GP groups are not currently party to the national NHS pay and conditions deal with unions, the Agenda for Change, and so do not officially constitute NHS organisations for the purpose of staff employment contracts. This means staff who are made redundant would be able to turn down the new posts and claim redundancy instead.
If half of those offered posts did this, the redundancy bill would soar by £300m. To avoid this cost, the DH will add the new groups to the Agenda for Change, a move which has been criticised by organisations which represent GPs.
Michael Dixon, chair of the NHS Alliance, said: “We want to avoid the restraints of the terms and conditions, but in order to stop people claiming redundancy we have this yoke around our heads of Agenda for Change which is contrary to CCGs being fleet of foot and able to decide their own destiny.”
Charles Alessi, chair of the National Association of Primary Care, added: “It’s certainly not part of what CCGs were originally meant to be.
“If all they are is part of the original establishment, then one questions as to why one bothered to do this in the first place.
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