Posted 18 March 2024 - 15:44
Posted 18 March 2024 - 15:44
News
Nurse pay: delay in bonus funding leaves thousands out-of-pocket
Health and social care secretary urged to honour community nurses’ backlog bonus pledge made in 2022-23 Agenda for Change pay deal, as new financial year looms
Health and social care secretary urged to honour community nurses’ backlog bonus pledge made in 2022-23 Agenda for Change pay deal, as new financial year looms
Thousands of nurses providing NHS services but ‘unfairly excluded’ from part of last year’s pay award are still losing out thanks to stalled bonus funding.
Four NHS-contracted community providers say they still have not received government funding for ‘backlog bonuses’ promised in November.
This means the organisations cannot provide their staff, including district, adult and children’s nurses, with non-consolidated payments agreed in the 2022-23 pay deal. The payments are worth between £1,655 and £3,789 per employee, depending on Agenda for Change (AfC) pay band.
And a providers organisation believes as many as 10,000 community staff in England could be affected.
Funds urgently need to be released to nurses’ employers
On Friday 15 March, Medway Community Healthcare director of finance and resources Chris Wright wrote a letter, seen by Nursing Standard, to health and social care secretary Victoria Atkins calling for urgent clarity on the promised payments. In it, he states: ‘On 6 November, your government agreed to help providers of NHS services, who have been unfairly excluded from the NHS pay deal, and deliver one-off payments to staff.
‘Since then, your department has offered repeated reassurance that this commitment will be delivered by the end of this financial year. This deadline is now just days away.
‘We now urgently need the clarity and the funding which the government has promised, in order to manage our finances and organisations effectively.’
Locala Health and Wellbeing head of finance John McLuckie has written a similar letter echoing calls for urgent assurance that the payments will be made to his organisation, whose nursing services cover parts of West Yorkshire and Greater Manchester. Letters have also been sent by CSH Surrey and Provide Community, which operates in the east, south west and north of England.
Last year, England’s Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) announced it would fund the bonus for staff working in social enterprises, charities and community services that provide NHS services where staff are employed on AfC contracts. The DHSC said employers that could show they had been hit financially by this part of the pay deal are eligible and should be reimbursed by April 5.
At the time, the then health minister Will Quince said the decision had been taken to ensure staff and their employers would not be disadvantaged by the NHS pay deal and would receive their backlog bonus for their efforts during the pandemic.
Staff's almost year-long wait to see their money
Social Enterprise UK, a collective body for organisations contracted to provide NHS services, said it estimates dozens of social enterprises – that together provide more than £1 billion worth of NHS care and employ more than 10,000 staff – are yet to receive the payments.
Director Dan Gregory said: ‘Social enterprises were promised funding to cover all parts of the NHS pay deal last year but our members still haven’t seen that money. So vital staff, working hard on the front line have now been waiting nearly a year for the government to properly fund the bonus that was agreed last spring.
‘We remain extremely concerned that the government is not fulfilling its side of the deal to ensure that all staff delivering NHS care are paid what they deserve.’
The DHSC was approached for a response.
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