NHS England will consult on new outsourcing guidance that will give more hospital workers NHS terms and conditions. The announcement follows a series of disputes between non-clinical staff and hospital managers over access to the NHS Pension Scheme, including at Airedale Hospital Foundation Trust, where support workers are employed through a wholly-owned subsidiary. 

More than 180 porters, domestics, catering and security workers employed by AGH Solutions – a private company set up in 2018 whose sole shareholder is Airedale Hospital Foundation Trust – walked out in mid-September and plan to go on strike again at the start of October in a dispute with hospital management.  

AGHS employees do not get standard NHS terms and conditions, such as access to the defined benefit pension scheme and enhanced rates for Sunday working, according to union GMB.  

AGHS staff members met with health secretary Wes Streeting at the TUC Congress earlier this month. Streeting told them he would discuss the matter with the trust, but it appears he went further than that. On Friday, Glen Burley, financial reset and accountability director at NHS England, wrote to NHS foundation trusts saying the government will consult on new guidelines for NHS outsourcing.

Before coming to power last year, Labour said it would “bring about the biggest wave of insourcing of public services in a generation”.

Burley wrote that NHS England intends “to change national guidance to confirm that new subsidiaries involving the transfer of NHS staff will now only be approved in a limited number of circumstances, and only where there is clear union support and protection of NHS terms and conditions, including pension access.” 

All proposals to move NHS staff into so-called ‘SubCos’ will now be paused, but the letter does not say what will happen with existing ones or whether staff who are already outsourced will be able to access the NHS Pension Scheme.

Unions have nonetheless welcomed the news. Unison general secretary Christina McAnea called the announcement a “step in the right direction”.  

GMB national secretary Rachel Harrison said the announcement shows the health secretary is listening to GMB members, who are campaigning to “end two-tier workforces in public services”.

“AGH must now give Airedale workers the NHS terms and conditions they deserve,” Harrison added. 

Airedale NHS Foundation Trust said: “As part of the group model AGH Solutions colleagues can access the same benefits that all our staff do such as health and wellbeing support, on-site childcare and NHS discounts.”   

The Yorkshire-based hospital added: “We fully support AGH Solutions to manage their own pay, terms and conditions, as they are a private company.  We know that they remain committed to working in partnership with trade union colleagues to move these negotiations forward.”   

The managing director of AGH Solutions, Dennis Kentrop, said: “We are proud to work for and with the NHS and Airedale NHS Foundation Trust, but we are a separate company.”  

Kentrop argued that “offering our own terms and conditions means that we have more flexibility in being able to offer competitive rates of pay, particularly for skilled tradespeople where the NHS terms and conditions would be more unbending”.  

He added: “It also allows us to offer the NEST pension which gives employees the chance to flex their payments up or down, helping to manage their finances more dynamically. With the NHS pension (Agenda for Change) people pay a fixed amount, depending on their band and the only alternative is to opt out.”  

According to Kentrop, the hourly rate for frontline staff and Saturday and night pay rates are higher than they would be under NHS ‘Agenda for Change’ terms and conditions.  

“We remain committed to continually improving AGH Solutions Limited as a place to work and, following recent negotiations with GMB, we further improved upon our pay, terms and conditions proposal. We’re disappointed that we couldn’t reach an agreement and avert further strike action, but we are working through our contingency plans to maintain the services that we provide to Airedale NHS Foundation Trust.”

According to investment platform Hargreaves Lansdown’s ‘Savings and Resilience Barometer’ 58% of public sector households are on track for an adequate retirement income, compared with 41% of households where employees work for large private companies and 42% of SME worker households.