Merseyside trusts paid £135k to cover Capita redundancy costs

The company started providing payroll and recruitment services to nine trusts in the “Merseyside consortium” in 2012.

However, the contracts were terminated last year, only three years into the seven year deal. The services were brought in house following claims of problems with staff payments and recruitment delays.

HSJ also revealed in February that the outsourcing firm was responsible for a breach of NHS employees’ data when it was running the trusts’ HR services.

Following information requests to the nine trusts, HSJ has discovered that a contribution of at least £135,000 was made between the eight which responded, to help cover Capita’s redundancy costs when the deal was terminated.

Alder Hey Children’s Foundation Trust refused to give the information to HSJ, saying that it was “unable to comment… due to commercial confidentiality” .

The largest individual contribution was made by Liverpool Community Health Trust, which paid £40,000.

Clatterbridge Cancer Centre FT paid £30,000 and Aintree University Hospitals FT paid £20,000.

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Liverpool Women’s FT, Mersey Care Trust and Liverpool Heart and Chest Hospital FT contributed £15,000 each.

Walton Centre FT and Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospitals Trust said they did not make payments to cover the redundancy costs.

HSJ asked Capita what the Merseyside consortium contributed in total to the company’s redundancy costs, but a spokesman said this was up to individual trusts to provide.

He said: “As a result of the mutual agreement that Capita would no longer provide services in early summer 2014, 73 staff were made redundant, the vast majority of whom were employed under NHS terms and conditions.”

He added: “The contributions to the staff redundancy costs were agreed by each trust.”