NHS redundancy bill halved to £17m as staff shortages bite

Figures analysed by The Yorkshire Post reveal £17 million in severance payments was paid in 2013-14 in the region, down from £33m the year before.

Around 580 staff were handed exit deals, compared with more than 1,130 in 2012-13.

Half the total redundancies came in eight NHS trusts providing social and mental healthcare, while 16 others providing hospital or ambulance services in Yorkshire saw the biggest reductions in severance deals.

The fall comes amid pressure on hospitals to enhance staffing in the wake of the report into the Mid Staffordshire scandal, leading to additional recruitment of doctors and nurses.

Instead the axe has fallen on non-clinical staff, but in many cases cuts in administrative and managerial staff have already been made, leaving NHS trusts struggling to carry out an unprecedented £20 billion in savings in England, plunging many into major financial difficulties.

Figures for 2013-14 reveal the South West Yorkshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust shed the most jobs with 101 staff given exit deals at a cost of £3.7m.

A further 91 jobs went at the Bradford District Care Trust at a cost of £2.1m.

In the hospital sector, Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust spent £2m on 38 exits including one deal which cost more than £200,000.

The Rotherham NHS Foundation Trust, where an American-led team of management consultants was last year drafted in to slash costs after it ran into financial difficulties, a further £1.8m was spent on 37 severance deals on top of £2.6m the previous year.

The debt-ridden Mid Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust, which runs services in Wakefield, Pontefract and Dewsbury, shed 46 staff at a cost of £1.2m in addition to £5.8m spent in 2012-13.

Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust was alone in making no redundancies.

Alan Davis, director of human resources and workforce development at the South West Yorkshire trust, said: “The trust has doubled in size over the last few years in terms of the number of staff employed. In addition to our services in Calderdale, Kirklees and Wakefield, we now provide community and mental health services in Barnsley and a range of health and wellbeing services across our geography. This has allowed us to gain benefits from economies of scale and reduce our management overheads, protecting frontline services.

“The redundant posts have been in support services, back office functions and management positions. It is essential that we invest in, and focus staff skills on, the delivery of frontline services.”

Official figures show staffing in NHS trusts in Yorkshire fell to its lowest level for many years in June last year when 125,600 people were employed compared with 135,500 in April 2010. Latest figures for July show 127,100 people were working in NHS trusts in the region.

Across England, NHS trusts employed 1.2m people - 13,000 fewer than in April 2010 - indicating the health service in Yorkshire has borne six times more job losses than nationally.

Numbers of clinical staff in Yorkshire stood at 65,200 in July, down from 66,000 in April 2010, but up from a low of 64,780 in July last year. Numbers of managers in frontline NHS trusts stood at 2,730 in July, down 1,250 working four years previously, to around 2.1 per cent of the workforce.