Friday brief: mental health trust joins Northants hospitals in asking for resignations
Read our end of the week round up
Northamptonshire’s NHS mental health trust has joined the county’s two hospitals in asking staff to consider resigning.
Following the Labour government’s overhaul of the finances of the NHS, Northamptonshire Healthcare Foundation Trust (NHFT) has this week sent out a message to all staff offering them a Mutually Agreed Resignation Scheme (MARS). This is where the trust can agree with the staff member to leave for a severance payment. Unlike with redundancy, no formal consultation is necessary.
NHFT’s move follows that of Northampton and Kettering General Hospitals, which opened a MARS scheme to staff last month. Unison said paying off staff would only make the NHS’ issues worse.
As reported by the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) the Northamptonshire Integrated Care Board is also facing making significant numbers of staff redundant as all ICB’s across the country have been told to reduce costs. At a recent meeting ICB boss Toby Sanders said:
“At the moment, I’ve got 500 staff that are frankly terrified about whether they’re going to be able to pay their mortgage or help their children through university.”
An NHS worker who contacted us said:
“The NHS in Northamptonshire is broken. They are seeking hundreds of applications and they are expecting hundreds of staff to apply. People want to leave.”
In a statement provided to NN Journal today, NHFT said:
“Nationally, across the NHS, care systems and organisations have been asked to ensure financial sustainability as well as consider the growth of the workforce in the years since the pandemic. In addition, we need to be responsive to the changing requirements of healthcare services within our community.
“As part of our continuing work to ensure we are meeting financial targets and providing value in the healthcare we deliver, NHFT has launched a Mutually Agreed Resignation Scheme (MARS).
“This allows eligible individuals to express their interest in leaving the Trust, should they wish to do so for personal reasons. It is an entirely voluntary scheme and enables us to both help individuals who wish to leave the organisation and support our organisation towards financial sustainability. Individuals in hard-to-recruit or specialist clinical roles will not be eligible for this scheme.”
According to latest ICB board reports NHFT is already one million over budget in its first month. It had planned to be just £3,000 in the red.
The University Hospital Northampton Group (which comprises the two hospitals) has a month one overspend of £5.6m which is £2.2m better than had been planned.
News in brief
There’s a change at the executive table at North Northamptonshire Council, as the authority has this afternoon announced that cabinet member for health and leisure Barry O’Brien is stepping down.
The Reform UK councillor, who represents Gretton and Weldon, has only been in post for six weeks and is leaving for personal reasons. He will be replaced by Cllr Brian Benneyworth, who represents Rothwell and Mawsley.
Flags, youth services and even the prospect of Northamptonshire’s two unitary councils merging again as part of a combined authority, featured at last night’s West Northamptonshire’s full council meeting.
In an expected move the authority, which is now run by Reform UK, decided to set a new flag policy, which will see only flags of other nations outside of Britain and community flags such as the LGBTQ Pride banned.
The move was described as ‘shameful’ and ‘divisive’ by opposition councillors and founder of the Northampton Windrush Generation group Martin Cole said the community were ‘heartbroken’ by the decision. But the party led by Cllr Mark Arnull, voted the new system through.
Despite the pre-election promises of the party to shake things up, much of the meeting appeared to be Tory flavoured, with the party agreeing to continue to take forward the corporate plan which had been drawn up by the Conservatives. However unlike their predecessors the new administration did take up a motion by the Labour group to put together a new youth strategy, with the leader asking opposition leaders to join him on a visit a youth action zone in London.
The meeting was attended by Colin Ireson from the Spring Family Centre, who talked about the lack of trained youth workers in the county and three students from Northampton International Academy also spoke at the meeting to tell councillors about the impact the lack of youth services were having on their peers.
The county’s youth services were decimated in 2007 and since then funding for youth services has been reduced hugely. In recent years youth violence has escalated with a number of tragic teenage murders in the county’s towns.
The council voted against the recommended 2.5 increase to their basic allowance and so allowances will remain the same, at around £16,000.
The county has been cut adrift in the devolution conversation with neighbours in Milton Keynes, Bedford and Luton not wanting to join forces with Northants to form a new strategic authority.
Independent Cllr Ian McCord insisted the snub was political and tasked leader of the Labour group Sally Keeble to speaking with her Labour colleagues from the neighbouring councils.
But in a move that raised many eyebrows, leader Mark Arnull said in the event the council was ‘orphaned’ it could seek a ‘combined county authority’ with North Northants and he had spoken with fellow Reform UK leader Martin Griffiths. He said they had looked at existing combined services and it was a solution.
As all Northants residents will remember, the county council disbanded in 2021 and all services were split between the two unitaries. Many hours of council officers' time was spent separating the services.
The council’s outgoing assistant chief executive Rebecca Purnell was at the meeting and NN Journal was able to ask her a few questions. As we exclusively reported yesterday, the senior officer, who has been on the board of failed housing company Northamptonshire Partnerships Homes (NPH) since 2021, is leaving the council next month.
Rebecca Purnell told us she was leaving with another job to go to in local government reorganisation.
She said:
“Part of the reason why I joined the NPH board was because there were challenges and my role was to work through those challenges and to work with council colleagues to try and improve things for our tenants and residents, who are at the centre of all this.”
She said the finances of the capital projects were discussed and said the problems had not come out of the blue.
She said all board members share accountability and responsibility and she was not paid for her role on the board. She said it is unfair to suggest the right questions were not being asked of NPH by board members, she fulfilled all her responsibilities and all board members have had legal advice.
Three major social housing projects under the management of NPH have failed, with only 24 homes provided at a cost of £25m. There could be as much as a £9m loss on the Avenue Campus and the Roof Gardens project in Spring Boroughs will now cost £30m, double the original sum with dozens less homes built then planned. A scheme for 122 key worker flats has also been abandoned, with £3.6m spent and the building will now be demolished.
(Read yesterday’s story without the paywall here).
The number of children with an education and health care plan in North Northamptonshire has surged from 3,700 to 5,000 in just a year.
And many parents are growing frustrated with the special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) provision and the ongoing battle to get their child a school place.
Mum Sofia Gaspar is a full-time carer for her five-year-old son, who is not currently in education and says the limited provision offered by North Northamptonshire Council (NNC) has had a serious impact on her child’s mental health, as well as straining her own.
She said:
“He is incredibly bright, creative, funny, imaginative, and much more sensitive and loving than he is given credit for. He builds, he plays, he feels, he loves, he shouts.
“He is also autistic. And he desperately wants to be heard and to belong.”
She says that since first moving to Rushden in December 2023 her son has not had a consistent school placement, as there was no nursery provision available in the area. From June of last year, she said he was then offered a highly restricted timetable due to the school’s ability to cope with his additional needs, where he was only able to attend for one hour a day, three days a week.
Ms Gaspar said this was originally supposed to be on a temporary basis until they could increase his contact time or NNC could find an appropriate alternative provision. The placement eventually broke down due to interruptions and repeated changes and reduction of his hours.
The five-year-old has now been without any form of provision for the past month.
The 31-year-old mum has said the lack of support from the council has left her feeling “completely helpless” with what she can do to get him a proper education and advocate for his needs.
“He’s literally regressed in certain aspects,” Ms Gaspar said. “There’s clear regression in his language and he will get dysregulated so easily. The worst thing is he keeps jumping to the conclusion that it’s because he’s not wanted.
“Why does my child come to me and ask me if autism is a bad thing, why isn’t he normal, why can’t he go to school? That’s how he feels about it.”
Since raising numerous concerns with the council at an EHCP annual review meeting last week, she has been told that NNC will be consulting alternative provisions on whether they can give him a school place. The outcome of the consultations still remains uncertain.
She has said that whilst there are people within the council’s SEND team who are compassionate and genuinely want to do the right thing for children, they are operating within a broken system which is rife with delays, contradictions and breakdowns.
Ms Gaspar added:
“I can’t describe the pain and the frustration and the anger of feeling like the things you’re trying to do to help your child are pointless.
“Everything that they are doing is a travesty and the saddest thing of it all is that my son is not the only one. There are so many other children and we are teaching them that because they are disabled they don’t matter.
“I have seen it and other parents are seeing it. They need to get their stuff together and start protecting the children they claim they advocate for.”
A spokesperson for North Northamptonshire Council said:
“North Northamptonshire faces an unprecedented surge in demand for SEND Support.
“In the past year, North Northamptonshire has witnessed an alarming increase in the demand for support services for children and young people with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND).
“The number of Education, Health, and Care Plans (EHCPs) has surged from 3,700 to an astonishing 5,000—an increase of 1,300 cases in the last 12 months. This rapid growth, driven by heightened migration to the area and a rise in complex needs, has outstripped the current provision available for our young people.
“In response to this pressing challenge, North Northamptonshire Council is implementing a comprehensive, multifaceted plan to build the necessary provision and support systems to match this escalating demand.”
By Nadia Lincoln, local democracy reporter
NN Events for this weekend
🏦 There’s a free event at Chester farm on Saturday and Sunday for Romanfest. Tickets must be booked in advance.
🔍An exhibition has opened at Delapre Abbey celebrating the rebuilding of Northampton after the great fire. More info here.
Did you know?
You can head to our website to read stories we have featured in the past. We’re getting towards 1,000 published articles, so take a look.
The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) Northamptonshire Branch is opposed to the use of The Mutually Agreed Resignation Scheme for the following reasons:-
1. The announcements of massive saving schemes and reductions in posts across the NHS in England means that current organisational changes create a redundancy or at the very least a potential redundancy situation.
2. There are clear NHS contractual terms and conditions relating to redundancy and voluntary redundancy.
3. Any use of a MARS in a redundancy situation may result in a breach of those contractual terms and conditions, particularly if a post vacated as a result of MARS is not then filled.
4. The NHS Social Partnership forum is engaging in discussions to develop a national Voluntatry Redundancy scheme and the RCN has formally asked that all MARS schemes be stopped.
5. Unless the proposed MARS scheme fully matches the NHS voluntary redundancy terms and conditions, the implementation of MARS at this time would be an unacceptable reduction to the entitlement of RCN members To voluntary redundancy.
Any continuation of this scheme rather than the utilisation of the redundancy and voluntary redundancy provisions contained in the NHS Terms & Conditions Handbook could lead to a formal dispute in the future.
Ian Graham
RCN Northamptonshire Branch Chair
Really good to see the new council have rejected an increase in allowances - well done