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Hospital staff invited to resign to reduce workforce

Martin Heath
BBC News, Northamptonshire
BBC Two nurses with long black hair wearing light blue nurses' uniforms, sit at a desk in a hospital corridor at Northampton General. There is a brown in tray stack in the foreground, there are clipboards on the desk and a photocopier stands in the background. {people are visible a long way down the corridor, and a woman is sitting in a room with blue chairs to the left.BBC
The scheme will not apply to staff who care directly for patients

Staff at two hospitals have been invited to resign as part of a drive to reduce the workforce.

A Mutually-Agreed Resignation Scheme (MARS) began on Thursday at Northampton and Kettering General hospitals.

The University Hospitals of Northamptonshire (UHN), which run both sites, said the scheme was designed to avoid compulsory redundancies.

A union has said it had "real concerns" about the move.

A MARS arrangement enables employees to agree with their employer to leave the organisation in return for a severance payment.

Unlike voluntary redundancy, MARS does involve a formal consultation process.

Google Hospital entrance with "welcome" in white lettering above the glass doors, and "Northampton General Hospital" picked out in white letters on a wooden panel to the right of the main doors. The doors have a grey portico in front of them. Grey block paving is visible in front of the building, and there are double red lines on the edge of a roadway in the foreground. Several people are either walking or sitting in the image.Google
Staff at Northampton General Hospital will be offered a severance payment if they agree to resign

Workers at both hospitals have been told about the scheme this week.

UHN's chief executive Laura Churchward said: "This voluntary scheme is designed to help reduce our workforce size in a controlled and compassionate way, avoiding compulsory redundancies.

"Colleagues who are caring directly for patients are not in scope of the scheme, and each application will be carefully considered to enable us to deliver more efficient services that continue to meet the needs of our patients."

The scheme will only be open to those in corporate, administrative and support roles.

A spokesperson for the union, Unison, which represents some workers at the hospitals, said: "NHS staff in Northamptonshire are already overworked. Paying off hundreds of staff will only make this situation worse.

"We have real concerns about what this will mean for the staff who resign under this scheme, for their colleagues who are left to pick up the pieces, and the patients who rely on vital services."

Sam Read/BBC Blue-framed glass entrance into Kettering General Hospital, with the name of the institution in white letters above the doorway. A "main entrance" sign is visible to the left. A further storey is visible above the main entrance. The reflection of an ambulance can be seen in the glass.Sam Read/BBC
The MARS scheme has opened at Northampton and Kettering General hospitals

As first reported in the Northamptonshire Evening Telegraph, a Kettering nurse said compulsory redundancies could not be ruled out if not enough people applied for MARS.

The nurse added that the workload in department where staff agreed to leave would be shared among the remaining team.

NHS rules require MARS schemes to be open for no longer than three months.

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