UNISON SECAmb Branch
43 Cissbury Avenue
Peacehaven
BN10 8TN
25 May 2022
Dr. Fionna Moore
Acting Chief Executive
SECAmb NHS Foundation Trust,
Nexus House
4 Gatwick Road
Crawley RH10 9BG
Dear Fionna,
As I am sure that you are aware, NHS staff are facing the largest cost of living crisis for a generation and the 2022 pay settlement is already well over a month overdue. Today, UNISON has handed in a letter signed by tens of thousands of our members to heads of the organisations responsible for NHS pay, including the Secretary of State for Department of Health and Social Care. We are calling for urgent action to deliver an inflation-busting pay rise for NHS staff.
Urgency is needed. I am sure that you will have been horrified that the Department of Health and Social Care had to apply an interim measure to prevent NHS pay rates falling below the legal minimum wage in April this year. The situation was entirely predictable and the failure to plan for it was negligent. This left many UNISON members stuck in working poverty while NHS employers were exposed to legal, reputational and employment relations risk.
You have a vital role to play as an employer and an NHS leader. First, we are calling for your support – public and private – for urgent action to deliver an immediate pay rise for NHS staff. DHSC, NHS England, NHS Employers, and the NHS PRB need to stop passing the buck.
Second, we are calling for tangible local actions to help our members face this cost-of-living crisis.
While pay is a national system you have direct responsibility for a number of pay issues that our members have told us are most important to them right now:
- Re-evaluation of roles across the Trust to ensure that banding is reflective of
job descriptions, specifically ECSW’s and AAP’s as a priority.
- To ensure flexible working is accessible, fairly paid and does not cause financial hardship.
- To ensure the treatment of additional hours is fair and consistent in line with Agenda for Change terms and conditions.
- Lifting our members out of in-work poverty, by reviewing all low paid worker job roles.
- To review mileage payments internally, and to request and support a national review of Agenda for Change mileage rates and HMRC limits.
Our national pay claim calls for national talks on these issues, as part of a resourced retention package. But you can take action now and commit to working with UNISON locally to discuss these issues. Unlike many of the suggestions we have seen in national toolkits for how employers can support staff in working poverty, these are meaningful issues of pay and reward, where improvements to how things are applied locally could make substantial improvements to the lives of your staff.
The NHS workforce is in crisis – we desperately need you to play your part to keep dedicated, hardworking but exhausted staff in the NHS. We need to make sure everyone is paid fairly for the job they do and the hours they work.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Kind regards
Peter Steventon
Peter Steventon
Branch Secretary