NHS paid headhunters £4m then filled most of roles in house

Vast majority of top posts went to those already working for the health service

HEALTH officials spent almost £4million on recruitment consultants to appoint leaders of new NHS bodies only to give almost all the jobs to those already working locally in similar roles, research reveals.

Last year, an NHS restructuring saw the creation of 42 integrated care boards (ICBs), with chief executives paid up to £275,000 each.

Freedom of Information disclosures show the health service spent £3.94million on recruitment consultants as part of the creation of the new boards.

But analysis reveals that the vast majority of the jobs of chief executives and chairmen went to NHS senior figures who were already working for the service – in most cases, locally.

Just four chief executives of 40 organisations which provided information came from outside the NHS, along with seven of their chairmen.

The disclosures reveal each ICB spent tens of thousands of pounds on external recruitment consultants. In addition, the health service has its own HR budgets to deal with recruitment.

Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary, said: “Under the Conservatives, millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money are being chucked at recruitment consultants. Surely this could have been done far cheaper in house. When patients are finding it impossible to get a doctor’s appointment or an operation when they need one, ministers overseeing millions of pounds of the NHS budget being spent on this top-down reorganisation will stick in the throat. Especially when the Conservatives still refuse to recruit the doctors and nurses the health service needs.”

NHS figures show chief executives of ICBs have average salaries of £210,000, against £127,000 for those at the Clinical Commissioning Groups they replaced.

Earlier this year, General Sir Gordon Messenger, a former Marine who led a review of NHS leadership, said headhunters were being paid “ridiculous sums” to swap NHS leaders around, instead of developing talent.

Sir Gordon, who led the Royal Marines’ invasion of

‘It’s phoning names that are already known and asking if they want a job’

Iraq, said: “It’s just headhunters that are paid ridiculous amounts of money phoning up the names that are already known and asking if they want to do jobs as the head of trusts.”

A Conservative source said: “Labour saddled the NHS with tens of billions of PFI debt, and now they plan to do a top down restructuring that will cost billions and do nothing for doctors or patients.

“We will take no lectures from them on how to run the NHS – Wes Streeting should stop playing political games and back our plan to cut waiting lists.

“We are recruiting record number of doctors and nurses into the NHS, and are investing more money than ever before to cut NHS waiting lists.”