Full story at Stroud News 21 February 2018
STROUD campaigners, unions and Stroud MP David Drew have joined forces to fight plans which they claim are ‘back-door privatisation’ of some parts of the NHS in Gloucestershire.
The move comes in response to proposed plans to move an estimated 750 workers at Cheltenham and Gloucester Hospitals out of NHS employment and into a subsidiary company.
If the plans go ahead then domestics, porters, cleaners, medical engineers and the people who clean surgical and hospital equipment, will no longer be employed by the Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.
Deborah Lee, chief executive of Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, wrote to a Unison official in October saying that setting up a separate company could reduce costs through ‘VAT flexibilities’.