NHS staff face redundancy after announcement of cuts

Posted 18/05/2010

Workers with the NHS may need to look at their rights under employment law after the organisation announced a slew of cuts.

According to the Guardian, a £2 billion fund is currently being set up by health officials in order to cover the redundancy payments which will need to be made in order to slash the budget of the service.

The money will also cover the costs of retraining staff and setting up new operations, but experts believe that redundancy payments could be the main use for the subsidies.

Paul Flynn, deputy chairman of the British Medical Association’s consultants committee, told the newspaper: “It seems job losses will be inevitable. Health is an emotional issue and, during the election, the parties did everything they could to avoid saying anything to indicate they will hit the NHS. But it is naive to think there won’t be some effect.”

A recent report from Personnel Today’s XpertHR revealed that directors had underestimated the number of redundancies they needed to make in 2009 by around three times.