Great Ormond Street Hospital nurses told: 'work for free' after accounting blunder

 
Accounts error: Great Ormond Street hospital Picture: Google Street View
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Nurses at Great Ormond Street Hospital are being told to work for free after an accounting blunder led to them being overpaid by six-and-a-half hours a year.

The chief nurse at the world-famous children’s hospital has written to about 800 staff telling them to work an additional shift or deduct the time from their annual holiday allowance after being overpaid by an average of £82.

Unions warn the “misguided” move will cause “significant damage to morale” as it ignores the fact that three-quarters of nurses at Great Ormond Street already work extra hours unpaid caring for sick children.

Sue Tarr, London operational manager at the Royal College of Nursing, said: “We have told Great Ormond Street they ought to withdraw this unreasonable proposal for staff to work unpaid.

“This is a management error and it should not be down to individual staff members to fix it. The plans will cause significant damage to morale at the trust and that will have knock on effects for patients.

“Great Ormond Street say that without these savings they would need to cut posts. It is pretty offensive to ask staff to pick between the two.”

Ward nurses and those in intensive care work 13 shifts each of 11.5 hours every four weeks - a total of 149.5 hours. However, due to an administrative oversight “for many years”, they have been paid for 150 hours.

Over the course of a year, this means they have been overpaid by 6.5 hours - a sum worth about £85,000 to the hospital.

Managers now want to correct the anomaly. Rather than deducting cash from nurses’ wage packets, they have offered a series of proposals to have them work the six-and-a-half hours for free between January and March next year or return earlier from their holidays.

Liz Morgan, the chief nurse, wrote: “I realise that this will be unexpected, and once again let me stress that there is no suggestion that you are at fault in this. But it’s a situation we must redress and I hope that all the options above allow us to do it in as painless a way as possible.”

According to its 2013/14 accounts, Great Ormond Street had an annual income of £413 million, including £45 million from private and overseas patients.

Dr Ali Mohammed, the head of the human resources department requiring nurses to work for free, took home a package worth between £200,000 to £205,000 - including almost £85,000 in pension contributions.

A spokeswoman for Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS Foundation Trust said: “Our nurses work extremely hard, however as part of a routine check of rostered hours at the hospital we found a discrepancy whereby full-time nursing staff had been working half an hour less than their contractual hours each month – which equates to a gap of 6.5 hours over a year.

“We are not attempting to claim back existing overpayments as we feel this would be unfair to our nurses. However, we have a public duty with public money to correct the issue going forward and ensure each staff member is being paid correctly for the hours they are contracted to work.

“We have tried to make this adjustment as easy as possible for our nurses by providing them with a choice of ways in which they can make up the shortfall each year. The majority of our nurses have been very understanding about the need to address this issue and recognise it is a matter of fairness and equity.”

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