The restructuring events database contains factsheets with data on large-scale restructuring events reported in the principal national media and company websites in each EU Member State. This database was created in 2002.
Southport and Formby; Southport; Ormskirk and District
Sector
Health / Social Work Human Health Services And Activities Human Health Activities 86.1 - Hospital activities
250 jobs Number of planned job losses
Announcement Date
6 July 2006
Employment effect (start)
10 July 2006
Foreseen end date
Description
A National Health Service trust that is to be the site of an independent treatment centre run by Bupa, the private healthcare group, has announced up to 80 job cuts as part of a drive to cut its workforce by 250, or 10 per cent. Southport and Ormskirk NHS Trust has announced 33 compulsory redundancies with immediate effect and says that it may need 50 more as it tries to save £14m over the next two years to cope with a financial deficit. It has yet to be specified when and how the remaining 170 jobs will be lost. The compulsory job losses come only days after Bupa was announced as the preferred provider to take over some space at the hospital to provide 1,000 operations a year as part of a wider contract to treat 6,000 patients annually in the north-west. The cuts were bitterly attacked by Unison, the largest health service union, which said the privately run treatment centres were being promoted as a means of increasing NHS capacity when the job cuts meant NHS capacity was being cut. Karen Jennings, head of health for Unison, said: 'It is particularly galling for staff when they see Bupa, like a cuckoo in the nest, setting up right in the heart of their hospital.'
The trust said the job losses and the new treatment centre were 'unconnected' and the result of 'unfortunate timing'. David Loasby, Bupa Hospitals' head of NHS business development, said the new unit, which it hoped to open by the end of the year, might involve about 20 whole-time equivalent staff. It also planned talks with the hospital to see if it could use displaced NHS staff in its own private hospitals in the north-west as an interim measure before taking them on at the treatment centre, he said.
'We very much want this to be a partnership between us and the NHS,' he added.
Ms Jennings said the number of job losses ann-ounced in England in recent months was now 'creeping towards the 20,000 mark and my fear is that this is still just the tip of the iceberg'.
It was now clear that 'real redundancies' were starting to occur, not just posts being lost through natural wastage.
Sources
8 July 2006: The Financial Times
Citation
Eurofound (2006), Southport and Ormskirk NHS Trust, Internal restructuring in United Kingdom, factsheet number 63741, European Restructuring Monitor. Dublin, https://restructuringeventsprod.azurewebsites.net/restructuring-events/detail/63741.
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