Private consultants paid at least £26m in NHS shake-up

Private consultants have been paid at least £26m as part of the reorganisation of the NHS, in what the doctors’ union described as an “unacceptable” transfer of money away from patient care.

They include some of the world’s biggest consultancy companies, which have been tasked with projects looking at such things as “reviewing demand and capacity” and “supporting sustainability”.

The figures were obtained by the British Medical Association (BMA) after a series of freedom of information (FOI) requests, which also revealed that more than 550 new non-clinical jobs have been created across the country to drive through the changes.

The FoI requests sought to uncover spending in recent years by sustainability and transformation partnerships (STPs) and integrated care systems (ICS), which were created as a means of delivering more localised integrated care across the health system.

Thirty of the 44 geographical areas covered by these bodies responded with new data, while information from a further nine was already available. A total of 11 of the 44 original STP areas admitted to spending more than £500,000 on private firms.

Dr Chaand Nagpaul, chair of the BMA council, said: “Given the perilous state of NHS finances and patients suffering delays for essential services, it is utterly unacceptable to see so much money flowing away from patient care to private consultancy firms.

“For many frontline staff – so used to seeing a lack of investment in workforce, equipment and buildings in their workplaces – this level of spending on private consultancy firms will be extremely difficult to comprehend.”

The hundreds of jobs created have led to an annual salary bill of around £32m, with a new cadre of senior staff being formed and 316 of the jobs attracting salaries of up to £142,500 a year.

However, the BMA claimed that the true costs may be even bigger, owing to some STP or ICS footprints either failing to update previously supplied figures or not providing any information at all.

Some of the biggest paying STPs were found to be Kent and Medway, which spent almost £8.2m on consultancy costs and created 36 job roles at a cost of £2.4m, and south-east London, which spent almost £4.2m on consultancy costs and creating 26 job roles at a cost of almost £1.7m.

Meanwhile, Greater Manchester – a uniquely devolved area – has 104 staff delivering transformation programmes at a cost of more than £6.4m of NHS funding.

Dr Louise Irvine, a GP based in Lewisham, south-east London, said: “I’m shocked to hear they are spending so much money. Here in Lewisham, like many other parts of the country, we are seeing major cuts to mental health services, school nursing and district nursing. We’ve had public health cuts like weight management, breastfeeding support and smoking cessation services totalling millions of pounds. This affects my daily work; we have no one to signpost people to any more.

“To hear this money is available to spend on this kind of thing and taken away from vital frontline care seems profoundly immoral.”

An NHS spokesperson said: “A recent BMA survey found that more than nine in 10 doctors support NHS action to join up care between GP practices and hospitals, which is precisely what these local initiatives are now doing. At the same time, spending on administration has been falling, and is on track to come down by another 20%.”