NHS England calls staff back from redundancy

NHSE director of people and organisational development, Helen Buller, wrote to all staff affected by planned redundancies last week.

The letter, seen by HSJ, said: “We realise you are in situations where your ongoing employment with us is coming to an end… however there are some temporary opportunities [for] people.”

HSJ reported at the end of last year that NHS England and NHS Improvement would shed over 600 posts under cost reduction plans.

Ms Buller listed a series of roles in which staff are needed for London and regional coordination centres. These included incident managers, information coordinators and task managers between bands 4 to 8d.

She also called for staff in bands 8a and above to work in “key roles” supporting national covid-19 tasks groups.

Ms Buller said the list of workstreams currently includes infection prevention, case transport, community testing and NHS strategic preparedness.

“None of these roles are considered suitable alternatives to redundancy as they are temporary in nature,” she said. “If you express an interest… the necessary steps will be taken to extend temporary contracts.”

An NHSE spokesman said: “Exceptional times require flexible and pragmatic responses, so just like the rest of the NHS we’re using all available people and resources to deal with coronavirus.”