by René Lavanchy
NATIONAL Health Service staff and unions cheered this week as Scotland’s first hospital built under the Private Finance Initiative came under NHS control.
Kincardine Community Hospital in Stonehaven, north-east Scotland, has been run by private care companies since 1998.
But last year, NHS Grampian decided to buy most of the hospital and take in the outsourced staff, whose contracts expired on Monday this week.
The new status means that staff will enjoy better pay and conditions, including pay increases agreed under the NHS’ Agenda for Change programme.
Sandra-Dee Masson, chair of Unison Grampian’s health branch and an NHS official, said: “We’re very pleased. Unison fought tooth and nail with NHS Grampian when the PFI went out. The staff are just thrilled to be back and we’re thrilled to be back.”
“There were significant problems with the previous regime. I think it would be fair to say that some of the standards probably don’t meet the level that the NHS would currently provide. We’ve brought back the cleaning staff – they’ve got far more equipment”.
Kincardine hospital was built in 1998 under plans drawn up by the previous Conservative Government. It replaced two NHS hospitals, whose jobs were outsourced to the private sector.
The last contractor, Care UK, will continue to run a nursing home there.
“Domestic staff were paid less per hour and they didn’t get as much annual leave”,
Ms Masson added. “Their sick pay policies were very different as well. The support for coming back to work and policies weren’t as good.”
“I think we have proved we probably spent more money paying for the contract than we would running it [publicly] in the first place.”
There was concern last year over the future of 19 staff who looked after long-stay patients after the NHS decided to stop providing continuing care. However, the staff have been moved to similar posts in Aberdeenshire.
The PFI came under new scrutiny south of the border this week, as it emerged that the new Home Office building and the Treasury’s offices are owned by offshore funds.
The assets are part of a multi-billion pound portfolio of PFI deals transferred to offshore funds, effectively rendering them tax-free for the duration of the contract. The Home Office deal alone is worth £311 million and will run until 2034.
This week, the controversy of PFI deals being kept off official balance sheets dragged on, as the Government’s financial advisers said not all departments were ready to put them on the books.
The chair of the Financial Reporting Advisory Board said the slowness of the Department of Health and Ministry of Defence in adapting to new rules was “deeply disappointing”.
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