You can read the first part here. This report deals with a recent dispute about outsourcing at a NHS Trust in the south of England. The last bigger attempt to outsource ‘auxiliary services’ at Southmead hospital happened in 2017/18 and was stopped by union and campaign opposition. At the time an estimated 3,000 NHS staff had been transferred to so-called sub-companies (‘subcos’) nationally. NBT management wanted to set up a ‘subco’ to manage facilities staff, such as cleaners, porters, catering and maintenance workers. With the ongoing process of fusion between NBT and UHBW these issues might come up again.

The outsourcing into so-called ‘subcos’ is primarily a financial trick to avoid tax payments. NHS Trusts pay VAT on various services and consumables and usually can not recover it. If they form a ‘subco’, which is in legal terms a private company, they have a vehicle to claim that VAT back. But more often than not, the pay and working conditions for workers at the ‘subco’ are also undermined.

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A while back, our NHS trust merged with another local trust, we are now in a group model. So we have a chief executive who’s responsible for the two trusts. But we’re meant to be separate entities. The trusts do not like the term merger being used, but on the ground we feel this is a gradual step to merging. This is all down to financial pressures and budget pressures to make cost savings. They spoke of £30 million savings, but didn’t specify how. Then the employer decided they wanted to outsource two of our departments. It affected about 40 workers from two different departments. The trust considered creating an arm’s length business or a sub-company. Our two departments were going to be moved over to the SuCo. 

I attended a trade union branch committee meeting in January 2025, I am a union representative. One of our contacts informed us that management had called the workers in those two departments to a meeting to discuss the two transfers. The employer had not officially informed the union. Our regional union officer said they would write to the employer. By that time I had found out where the meeting was taking place from one of our members. I went to that meeting with the affected workers from the two departments, it was being run by a senior manager within the HR department. I intervened in that meeting, stating the meeting had to stop because the employer had failed to consult with the union over this. They sort of pushed back and said: “Well, we actually informed the union of today’s meeting”. I asked them when they did so. One of the supporting members of the HR team said: “Oh, it was one hour ago”. 

I don’t know if our union full-time official had received this information because when I asked for the correspondence that the union had sent to the employer, they wouldn’t send it to me. So in terms of the communication between the regional union office and management I was not kept in the loop. But I had the timetable when the employer should have consulted with the union about the outsourcing and the meeting with staff, etc., and they clearly hadn’t followed that procedure. I told them: “You haven’t consulted with the union. This meeting has to stop”. And the majority of the people in attendance walked out of that meeting and they subsequently joined the union, which is a good step.

Then the employer wanted to reconvene the meeting and they weren’t liaising with me. They were liaising with the regional officer. I came to understand that they wanted to get the transfer done and dusted within six weeks. I emailed the HR department. I said to the department you have failed to follow your timetable for this consultation. You have failed to inform the union of plans. The Tupe (Transfer of Undertakings / Protection of Employment) timetable should be halted and there should be an investigation into how this has been allowed to happen.

From that moment onwards the regional union office cut me out of the communication. They didn’t speak to me at all. They put this stupid transfer back on track for management. But now we were in a situation where a majority of affected staff were union members. One of the new members came forward because, after I had said to both the affected departments, that ideally we need stewards in both departments. The problem was that this member was a middle-manager, which is always an issue. From the other group, nobody came forward. So I said: “Well, no problem, I’ll represent them”. 

At this point the regional office intervened and decided to put another union official as their representative. I was effectively sidelined. They didn’t want me there basically. Which in a way is a bizarre thing to do if you want branches to stand up on their own two feet. The regional officer said to me that I was being too aggressive. That was their explanation. Now that wasn’t the view of the affected members. The regional officer said to me that they have got a good relationship with the employer that “certainly, we’re not going to fight this Tupe, but next time we will.” I said that we need to fight it now because if we don’t fight now, next time it’s going to be even harder. But I was seen as being disruptive. They didn’t want this plan to be halted. What it did mean was that the employer had to go through the process more transparently, but the members I had spoken to felt the regional offices were not supporting them. They didn’t feel that they were trying to stop the process or challenge the process. But they’ve had no experience of trade unions or collective resistance. The other branch committee members were quite fragmented, also geographically. I was the sole rep of our union in our trust. And the joint union committee is quite conservative, for example, they would take down leaflets to mobilise against the far-right from the union notice board.

So the transfer is done and dusted now. I checked some government guidelines which say that public bodies should be transparent with their money. A lot of the SubCos are basically a form of tax avoidance, even the government has stated that. So I contacted the employer and said: “Can you provide the business case for this Tupe transfer?” They responded by saying that it ‘commercially sensitive’. I contacted the regional office and asked for legal advice, but they fobbed me off, saying that they had checked the legal context already. My feeling is they did not seek legal advice. Otherwise the only change that has resulted from the transfer that I know of is the right of the staff to use the trust car parks. They have to pay differently for it now. But there again, that was only discovered after the event. Since then the regional offices passed on a lot of individual case work to me. My gut feeling is that they want to keep me busy with case work, so that I don’t mess with the bigger picture.

The other outsourcing that had happened a while back concerned the MRI scanners in the imaging department. They are run by a separate organisation, which also organises the patient appointments. The people who operate the MRI scanners are also employed by this company. I’m aware of one clinician who is employed by the NHS, but who now also writes MRI reports. I assume they are moonlighting for the private company when it comes to the MRI work. I don’t know the scope of how many NHS staff clinicians are working for the private company. And my understanding is that this company currently doesn’t meet the contract targets, but it is unclear if they have to pay penalties or if there are any other consequences. And what happens if the contract is terminated or the company goes bust. Are we left without scanners?