Ten members of staff have been given average pay-offs of £79,000 each after they were made redundant by Northampton General Hospital.
Health bosses revealed to the Chron staff numbers had reduced by a net total of 56 staff since last year’s cutbacks began, as the hospital aims to save £30 million over two years.
Ten of them were made compulsorily redundant and collected ‘exit packages’ of at least £10,000 each.
Three of them pocketed golden goodbyes worth between £100,000 and £150,000. The remaining 46 positions were axed through a combination of retirements and voluntary redundancies. In the latter case, it is understood that no payments have been offered by NGH bosses, with workers simply getting basic statutory redundancy. The hospital also implied that more positions may be cut, as the process “will continue in the years to come”, but added it did not believe services would be adversly affected.
Paul Farenden, NGH’s acting chief executive at the time, said in April last year that savings were having to be made because “for the first time we are seeing a decrease rather than an increase in the amount of funding we receive”. Michael Ellis, MP for Northampton North, said the redundancies and associated savings may not be a bad thing.
He said “The amount in the redundancy packages does seem high but you do have to look at how much the hospital will save in wages in coming years. I imagine staff will have noticed inefficiency at NGH over the years and, as long as it doesn’t affect frontline services, cutting that down is a good thing.”
FORCING staff at the top of NGH to leave, robs the hospital of vital experience and huge sums in compensation packages, according to union bosses
Gerry Looker, regional organiser at Unison, said: “What these figures show is the cost of dismissing long-serving managers who have advanced through the bands.
“The NHS goes through change after change and so many of unnecessary restructures, many of which aim to save money, yet carry massive redundancy costs.”