{"id":7572,"date":"2016-02-03T14:30:17","date_gmt":"2016-02-03T14:30:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/unitelive.org\/?p=7572"},"modified":"2016-02-03T17:23:56","modified_gmt":"2016-02-03T17:23:56","slug":"runaway-pay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/?p=7572","title":{"rendered":"Runaway pay"},"content":{"rendered":"
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As NHS frontline workers barely eke out a living on meagre wages \u00e2\u20ac\u201c a reality most recently reflected in the junior doctors dispute \u00e2\u20ac\u201c NHS senior managers continue raking in increasingly larger salaries.<\/p>\n

 
\nNearly 80 per cent of top NHS bosses took home more than \u00c2\u0141100,000 each year in 2015, with almost a quarter earning more than \u00c2\u0141142,000, a new pay survey has revealed.<\/p>\n

 
\nThe study also found that there has been an uptick in the number of non-medical directors at NHS trusts earning over \u00c2\u0141100,000, with 77 per cent earning more than \u00c2\u0141100,000 last year.<\/p>\n

 
\nAverage chief executive pay in the health service substantially exceeds \u00c2\u0141100,000 \u00e2\u20ac\u201c chief executives at acute NHS trusts earn on average \u00c2\u0141182,000, while top bosses at ambulance trusts, many of which fail performance targets across England, take home an average of \u00c2\u0141157,000.<\/p>\n

 
\nThe survey found that NHS executives were most handsomely rewarded at the largest trusts , as measured by income. For example, chief executives at University College London Hospital, Guy\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s and St Thomas\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 and Cambridge University all earned in excess of a quarter of a million pounds.<\/p>\n

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Big pay for short-term contracts<\/strong><\/em>
\nThe survey, conducted by pay analysts E-reward.co.uk, noted that interim directors, which were not accounted for in their averages, can earn several times more than even the highest paid full-time directors.<\/p>\n

 
\nIt is a persistent problem that health secretary Jeremy Hunt said he would address, when he wrote to all NHS trusts in June of last year, ordering that they clamp down on runaway interim director pay.<\/p>\n

 
\nBut as the Daily Telegraph<\/em> reported yesterday<\/a> (February 2), health organisations are continuing to offer enormous pay deals for short-term contracts.<\/p>\n

 
\nIt was revealed that one NHS finance director, Tim Bolot, was paid \u00c2\u01411.5m over the 18 months that his firm, Bolt Partners, was employed for the Medway Foundation Trust from June 2014 to December 2015. The deal amounted to a pay package worth \u00c2\u014185,000 a month.<\/p>\n

 
\nMeanwhile, the Medway trust is one that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been described as one of the worst hospitals in the NHS \u00e2\u20ac\u201c it is rated ‘inadequate’ and has been on special measures for the last three years. The trust is forecasting a year-end deficit of \u00c2\u014148m.<\/p>\n

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Worrying turnover rates<\/strong><\/em>
\nThe survey, which examined 1,400 NHS hospital trust directors, also highlighted alarming levels of board turnover.<\/p>\n

 
\nExcluding directors who had retired, the survey found that turnover rates at trusts in England, Wales and Northern Ireland all stood at 30 per cent or more, with wide variation between rates at foundation and non-foundation trusts in England.<\/p>\n

 
\nNon-foundation trusts in England had turnover rates of more than 35 per cent, while foundation trust levels stood at 27 per cent.<\/p>\n

 
\nThese rates have increased remarkably since the introduction of the Health and Social Care Bill 2011, when substantial reorganisation of the NHS first began. In that year, English foundation and non-foundation trusts had turnover rates of 28 and 20 per cent respectively, figures thought to be very high at the time.<\/p>\n

 
\nIt was found that 229 NHS trusts and health boards spent \u00c2\u0141116m in redundancy costs last year.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Growing pay disparity<\/strong><\/em>
\nLike all public sector organisations, NHS trusts are required to publish pay ratios between median full-time earnings and the highest paid director. England and Northern Ireland had the highest pay ratios, with the median being 7:1. Scotland had the lowest ratio at 6:1. There were wide variations, however \u00e2\u20ac\u201c some trusts had pay ratios as high as 21:1<\/p>\n

 
\nUnite national officer for health Barrie Brown criticised the growing disparity between NHS bosses\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 pay and staff on the frontlines.<\/p>\n

 
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u015bWhat we have here is the Alice in Wonderland world of NHS pay when many NHS top bosses \u00e2\u20ac\u201cwho do not treat patients \u00e2\u20ac\u201care taking home much more than the Prime Minister\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s salary of \u00c2\u0141142,500, while nurses and other health professionals on \u00c2\u014122,000-a-year have seen their real incomes eroded by 15 per cent since 2010,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 he said.<\/p>\n

 
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u015bHealth secretary Jeremy Hunt is keen to impose contract changes on the junior doctors, but seems strangely adverse to tackling the mega pay packets of NHS chief executives,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 he went on to say.<\/p>\n

 
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u015bYet despite these handsome salaries, there still seems to be vacancies for the top jobs and chief executives don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t stay very long at trusts. This jobs\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 merry-go-around also needs to be investigated by Hunt.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

 
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u015bA legacy of Andrew Lansley\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s disastrous tenure as health secretary has been an enormous redundancy bill as organisations such as NHS England and Public Health England expensively restructured and \u00e2\u20ac\u0098hired-and-fired\u00e2\u20ac\u2122,” Brown noted.<\/p>\n

 
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u015bThese all leaves a very sour taste in the mouth for all of us who use the NHS and can see dedicated frontline staff with increasing workloads under intense daily pressure.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As NHS frontline workers barely eke out a living on meagre wages \u00e2\u20ac\u201c a reality most recently reflected in the junior doctors dispute \u00e2\u20ac\u201c NHS senior managers continue raking in increasingly larger salaries.   Nearly 80 per cent of top NHS bosses took home more than \u00c2\u0141100,000 each year in 2015, with almost a quarter […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":827,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[331,29,63],"wps_subtitle":"NHS bosses still raking it in as frontline staff suffer","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7572"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7572"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7572\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7573,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7572\/revisions\/7573"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/827"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}