East Kent Hospitals Trust, which operates sites including QEQM in Margate, Ashford’s William Harvey Hospital and Canterbury hospital, is planning to cut staff numbers to reduce its ‘pay budget.’
The Trust employs some 8,000 people and says the expected number of redundancies will be fewer than one per cent, equating to around 80 staff.
Since the start of 2024 the Trust has been developing a long-term plan to reduce its deficit.
In the last financial year, which ended on 31 March, it made £49m of savings to achieve a planned overspend figure of £86m.
The plan submitted to government by the Trust for this year takes the overspend estimate to £64m by the end of March 2026.
That means savings of £80m have to be made in this financial year.
The Trust says the plan is to reduce non-pay spend, cut reliance on bank and agency staff and cut the number of posts.
‘Natural turnover’
A spokesperson for East Kent Hospitals said: “We value the important contribution of everyone who works for our Trust.
“Like Trusts across the country we need to reduce our costs, this includes reducing our total pay budget of £742m by £45m.
“As much as possible, we aim to do this through natural turnover, restricting recruitment particularly in non-clinical areas and reducing our reliance on higher cost bank and agency staffing.
“All changes to roles will be first assessed for their impact on safety and quality to ensure that patient care is not affected.
“Where posts may become at risk, staff will be supported and offered alternative roles within the Trust wherever possible, we expect the number of redundancies to be less than 1% of our workforce.”
A Trust report to Kent County Council’s health scrutiny panel earlier this year said: “A continued area of focus for grip and control and CIP (Cost Improvement Plan) planning will be workforce expenditure and in particular medical agency spending.
“While agency spending has been reducing in several areas of workforce in the current financial year, there is more opportunity to bear down on this spending in medical.
“We are continuing to review how we are using our workforce to ensure that staff are in the right place and we are not using high-cost agency staff unless necessary.”
Last year a number of admin roles at East Kent Hospitals were cut with affected staff reapplying for jobs or being redeployed to other roles.
This week the hospital trust also announced a hike in parking charges for patients, visitors and staff from Tuesday, 1 July.
A statement said: “While this decision has not been taken lightly and we understand the frustration it may cause, parking charges for our patients and visitors have not increased for seven years.”
Charges will increase by a flat rate of 20p an hour.
- First 20 minutes free (calculated from the time you enter the hospital site)
- 1 hour: £2.50 (from £2.30)
- 2 hours: £3.50 (from £3.30)
- 3 hours: £4.50 (from £4.30)
- 4 hours: £5.50 (from £5.30)
- 5 hours: £6.50 (from £6.30)
- 6 hours: £7.50 (from £7.30)
- 7 hours: £8.50 (from £8.30)
- 8 hours: £9.50 (from £9.30)
- 9 hours: £10.50 (from £10.30)
- 10 hours: £11.50 (from £11.30)
- Maximum daily charge for a stay of up to 24 hours: £12 (from £10)
- Week pass: £16 (from £12)
The statement added: “Parking in our pay and display car parks will also be brought in line with our pay on foot car parks, meaning parking charges are the same across our sites.
“Free parking arrangements remain in place for Blue Badge holders, parents/guardians of children admitted overnight, and eligible patients who need to attend regularly, for example for dialysis and cancer treatment. Please speak to staff on the reception of the area you are visiting if you think you may be eligible.”
Income from parking charges, after running costs and car park maintenance and improvements, is reinvested by the Trust into supporting patient care at East Kent Hospitals. It does not profit share with any third party private operator, although it does use systems and equipment provided by a car park management service.
Same old rubbish, senior staff that earn more money will stay, and the can kicked down the road to the lowest paid that will be forced to go.
Senior staff will always feather their own nest, and when redundancy comes to the low paid staff who actually need the money.
Fake tears from senior management and directors.
Redeployment means knowing staff can’t travel to the other hospitals so they will except the redundancies.
I guess East Kent hospital trust must think the public are thick!!!
in some ways i can see the need to remove the deadwood at the qeqm , i have often noticed the amount of staff wandering about the hospital , or standing in the corridors chatting .none of them seem overworked
What a ridiculous observation. Grow up and stop hanging around hospitals watching people.
Of course it is never cutting the bosses obscene salaries or bonuses, it is sacking people that make a difference to patient outcomes.
How much money did the Trust spend trying to divert attention away from the appalling maternity failings & ignoring recommendations for years leading to deaths, by doing the old new lick of paint, new us routine, redesigning the Margate A&E to look like some awful bright white walled art gallery? 30 million wasn’t it?
I think some in the NHS hoped and expected that the labour government would bail them out, after a bit of shaking the begging bowl surreptitiously. It did not quite go to plan.The NHS did OK out of the spending review, but Wes Streeting wants to see better productivity from them.
This trust is far too big and far to disorganised. This is why they get staff who can’t get work elsewhere.
The trust will continue to deliver poor care because of its structure and because the Kent coast is retirement central.Lots of old people means higher demand and delays because KCC cannot deliver care plans quickly enough.
Labour like the Tories want it to totally collapse, so they can let their rich friends/donors privatise it-so people just die like they do in the US, unable to afford treatment.
Really, SGNA? How do you know?
Not hard to see the root of the problem
“Charges will increase by a flat rate of 20p an hour”
Then we get a list of prices where the actual increase is 20p per visit. So definitely a serious problem with basic mathematics by the either the NHS source of the information or the reporters ability to present the information.
If its the NHS source no wonder they can’t stay within budget. Details do matter.