Agenda for delay

With union ballots unresolved and early implementers struggling with the size of the project, is Agenda for Change in danger of hitting the buffers? Mary-Louise Harding reports

It was perhaps inevitable that the largest reform of a public service workforce since 1948 would miss one or two deadlines.

Although largely supportive of banding and pay proposals under Agenda for Change, Unison - the largest union in 'staff-side' negotiations after the Royal College of Nursing - will not seek members' final approval of the pay deal until early implementers have been evaluated. And that could mean stalling national roll-out.

As HSJ reported earlier this month (news, pages 6-7, 11 March), NHS-wide implementation will be delayed by at least a month if the Department of Health agrees to wait for unions to deliver their verdicts.

Unison and others in the recognised NHS joint unions group originally expected to take the vote in June, based on the 12 early implementer sites completing their work at the end of December 2003.

Now that deadline has passed, national evaluation reports are not expected until next month, pushing back the time-frame in which unions say they can turn around their official response process.

As HSJ went to press, the joint unions were in the process of drafting a letter to DoH human resources director Andrew Foster, requesting that implementation be 'put back until after our result is known'.

Overall responsibility for the new system will pass to the NHS staff council, which will replace relevant functions of the general Whitley council (the body that sets terms and working conditions for most NHS staff ) and the separate functional Whitley councils, when, or if, the unions secure members' approval.

In the meantime, the staff council is working in shadow form to produce a national review, which is expected to be published in April.

Unions have moved to downplay the significance of the latest expected delay to their final agreement on the pay proposals - hardly surprising considering the three years it took for the unions to agree to the recent pilot process.

Unison points out that the early implementation process was already underway before its first ballot approved its decision to co-operate with them, so this delay should not be an 'insurmountable problem'.

Unison national secretary Paul Marks says: 'We have said since last year when we decided to support early implementers that we had concerns about the number of people apparently needing protection around working unsocial hours under the new system.

'We also had concerns about how admin and clerical staff were categorised in the new job evaluation system.We need to learn from early implementers, establish if [those concerns] are genuine and take it from there.

'The early implementers have taken a lot longer to assimilate people than initially hoped because of the size of the exercise.

[It] means we will not be able to go to our people with a full evaluation and position until a later date.'

However, despite potential delays, David Moss, DoH pay reform delivery board chair and Southampton University Hospitals trust chief executive, says NHS-wide implementation by March 2005 is still 'achievable'.

'We should be clear about the lessons [from the early implementers] by the end of March or beginning of April, which will tell us how best to implement, how to transfer staff, how much it costs and so on.

'Then we intend to cascade lessons to the rest of the service, so when we go to full implementation in October it will be built on solid experience.'

The key issues which employer and staff-side organisations want solved are around rates for working unsocial hours and ensuring certain admin and clerical staff - such as, appropriately, payroll staff - are placed in the relevant band.

East Anglian Ambulance trust HR director Seamus Elliott has put his pay modernisation experience to the test, leading one of two ambulance trust early implementer sites.

As HSJ went to press, the trust had 'almost' completed its matching and evaluation of roles process, and was expecting 100 per cent acceptance from the 1,400 staff on trust contracts.

There are, however, some 'outstanding issues' regarding technician payband proposals in the ambulance service, partly owing to the late arrival just before Christmas of the national profile for the job.

Mr Elliott says the slight unrest among technicians - who are currently placed at the top of band four - is an inevitable symptom of the pressures felt at 'the interface of bands'.

He added: 'Work is going on nationally to see if we need to develop a band-five profile for certain types of technician - we have co-operated with the unions and are supporting the Ambulance Service Association and DoH to map through career development pathways for ambulance personnel.'

Mr Elliott adds that if work cannot begin in earnest on national implementation until November, then the March 2005 deadline will probably be missed.

This will impact as higher income tax on back pay if it slips into the next financial year. Staff receiving any increases will receive pay backdated to 1 March 2003.

'Hopefully our lessons will be transferred, so [other trusts] will have solid guidance, and not repeat the same mistakes, ' says Mr Elliott.

As the largest early implementer, Guy's and St Thomas'Hospital trust in London has faced a significant challenge.

It expects to have completed the job 'matching' process (agreeing a national profile for each staff member) by the end of March, and looks set to have assimilated all staff on to the new terms and conditions by the end of July.

The trust has worked out local solutions in terms of unsocial hours working, where it makes up a relatively small portion of a staff member's working week.

However, many trusts are expecting a change to national guidance for staff who work 'very high levels' at unsocial times.

'We know our staff-side is concerned about unsocial hours, ' says Guy's and St Thomas' Agenda for Change manager Ted Angell.

'The new system is on a much more planned principle of unsocial hours and rotas.'

Mr Angell says that trusts - regardless of size - can ensure they are doing everything to implement to schedule by using this time to plan.

'I would say the key to successful implementation lies in planning and preparation. Trusts have time to do this, where [early implementers] did not.'