Leeds Teaching Hospitals staff transfer plan is shelved

Cost-saving plans to transfer more than 2,000 hospital staff into a private company have been shelved - despite £75m of savings needed at the city's NHS trust.
FINANCIAL CHALLENGE: Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust.FINANCIAL CHALLENGE: Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust.
FINANCIAL CHALLENGE: Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust.

Leeds Teaching Hospitals has confirmed that it will not go ahead with the staff transfer, which sparked fierce opposition from unions, during the current financial year.

The move, which led to the threat of industrial action, would have seen estates, facilities, procurement and clinical engineering workers transferred to a firm set up by the trust itself.

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Simon Neville, Director of Strategy and Planning at the Leeds trust, said: “This decision was made following extensive engagement with our staff and we are now using this time to explore alternative models that will help us to meet the significant financial challenges we face.”

Tony Pearson, Unison’s Regional Head of Health, said NHS staff needed reassurance over their futures after the plan was put on hold. He said: “We have campaigned very heard on this. People do not want to lose their NHS status.”

Leeds Teaching Hospitals also revealed the scale of the scale of the financial challenge it faces to balance the books during 2018-19.

Multi-million pound savings are needed, despite the organisation last year with an £18.9m surplus. Mr Neville said: “We need to make £75m worth of savings this financial year so if we are able to find ways of generating income this reduces the pressure to find efficiencies that are increasingly difficult to identify.”