NHS board unable to claw back overpay

An NHS trust will not claw back a £90,000 salary overpayment that was mistakenly given to a member of staff over eight years.

NHS Lothian said the sum – equivalent to five nurses’ salaries – was wrongly paid because of a “simple arithmetic calculation error”.

But it has decided not to try to recover the money after legal experts warned that it could take 50 years to get it back.

Miles Briggs, Scottish Conservative shadow health secretary, said this “avoidable error” is a “total waste of taxpayers’ money”.

He said: “This avoidable error is a total waste of taxpayers’ money which is particularly frustrating at a time when the NHS is so starved of money and staff.

“All NHS boards must ensure mistakes like this do not reoccur and the SNP must properly resource our health service.”

NHS Lothian has an annual budget of more than £1 billion, employs 26,000 staff and provides health services to around 800,000 people.

Susan Goldsmith, director of finance at NHS Lothian, said: “In cases of overpayment, the default position for NHS Lothian is always to recover salary overpayments. This was an isolated and exceptional case and was the result of human error.”