The NHS chiefs given £300k payouts… and rehired within weeks
CAMPAIGNERS are calling for huge NHS payoffs to be scrapped, after three bosses were paid a total of £1million – only to walk into new Health Service jobs.
The ‘revolving- door’ culture came under fire after manager Rob Cooper revealed he had been working full- time since last March despite a huge redundancy payment.
Mr Cooper received at least £370,000 but already had a new job lined up at a different health trust.
Millions of pounds have been spent on dozens of managers whose roles have disappeared under the Government’s Health Service re- organisation. The NHS spent £1.4billion on redundancy packages for staff in the last three years with some receiving deals of more than £ 600,000. Some 2,299 bureaucrats have been handed six- figure golden goodbyes since 2010. Many simply moved to another part of the NHS.
Under Health Service rules staff must only wait four weeks after taking redundancy before they can move to a new job. However Sir David Nicholson, chief executive of NHS England, appealed to managers to wait six months at least. Mr Cooper received between £370,000 and £375,000 for losing his role as a deputy chief executive at Yorkshire and the Humber Strategic Health Authority.
But by the time the trust was shut down he had a job as director of finance for South London Healthcare NHS Trust.
He now works as interim finance director at Barking, Havering and Redbridge Uni-
‘Obscenely large’
versity NHS Trust. He said: ‘I have only charged for 75 per cent of my time, which I believe reflects the spirit of the letter from Sir David.’
The Department of Health has pledged to cap redundancy payouts and claw back money from those who work again for the NHS within a year, but this will not be retrospective.
Jonathan Isaby of the TaxPayers’ Alliance said: ‘NHS staff shouldn’t be in line for obscenely large pay-offs in the first place, but it’s appalling that pay-outs have gone to staff who have walked into other NHS jobs weeks later.
‘It’s time the revolving door into highly-paid public sector jobs was shut, permanently.’
Another NHS manager, Steve Spoerry was paid between £335,000 and £340,000, after his job as managing director of Halton and St Helens Primary Care Trust was axed last March. He is now director of strategy at South and West Yorkshire and Bassetlaw NHS Commissioning Support Unit, which insists it has ‘followed NHS England’s guidance’.
Former chief executive of Doncaster Primary Care Trust Annette Laban was handed between £285,000 and £290,000 before taking up a £15,500-ayear part-time role as a nonexecutive director of Sheffield Teaching Hospitals.
There is no suggestion that any of the appointments were outside the NHS rules.