STP staff costs diverting money from frontline

The British Medical Association (BMA) has revealed that sustainability and transformation plans (STPs) have created a vast cohort of jobs, taking millions of pounds out of the frontline NHS.

Some STPs are using costly agency staff or seconding senior staff from other NHS organisations while other areas have created new roles for external applicants - with annual salaries of at least £8.5 million.

The BMA has also highlighted a major disparity in the processes being carried out across the country, with health leaders in some parts of the country using the resources already at their disposal to move the STP process forward, while others have formed whole ‘project management teams’.

This variation is emphasised in the East Midlands where Nottinghamshire’s STP has already put together a team of 10 staff costing £385,000, whereas Derbyshire’s STP had only employed two staff at the time of asking at a cost of just £68,000.

In total, the BMA has found that 158.6 full-time equivalent roles in the STP process have been created - costing around £8.9 million - although the figures likely to be much higher with only around half of the 44 STP footprints responding to the request.

David Wrigley, STP policy lead at the BMA, said: “Doctors and patients will be horrified to see the amount of money being spent on another layer of potentially wasteful bureaucracy in the NHS. These STP plans hide £26 billionn worth of health service cuts, as revealed by the BMA earlier this year, and are already falling apart – with the Treasury coming up with only a tiny percentage of the capital they need to get started.

“These revelatory figures show the worrying lack of consistency across the country – with some footprint areas hiring scores of staff at vast costs, some turning to private consultants and some making the best of the management structure already operating in their local area. The result of these plans will be more inconsistency, a deepened postcode lottery and, ultimately, both doctors and patients will suffer.”