Strictly embargoed: Not for publication or broadcast prior to 0000 BST on 01/04/2016:
A spokesperson for the Campaign to Save Mental Health Services in Norfolk and Suffolk said:
“When we heard the rumours that the Chief Executive of Norfolk & Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust (NSFT), Michael Scott, was going to voluntarily reduce his salary by £35,000, we didn’t know whether to believe them or not. That said, we were delighted to hear that Michael Scott has decided to listen to widespread public and staff concern and adopt the trust’s new ‘values’, ‘putting people first’ and reverse the ill-advised twenty-five per cent pay increase he trousered when he became the Chief Executive of the mental health trust despite appalling cuts to jobs and services and many staff having their salaries reduced.”
“Research published in December 2015 by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), the professional body for HR and people development, found that:
‘The upward momentum of chief executive pay and reward in the UK’s largest organisations has reached a crisis point. It does not clearly correlate to personal performance or business outcomes and this is having a significant impact on the motivation levels of the wider workforce’
“Perhaps Norman Lamb, former Health Minister and North Norfolk MP, could advise Mr. Scott on how to survive on a lower salary since his own loss of ministerial office after the election? That said, Michael Scott would still be paid around the same as the British Prime Minister, David Cameron, so shouldn’t be too hard up. With interest rates at historic lows, George Osborne’s giveaway budget for the rich and £8,000 in ‘relocation expenses’, even the mortgage on Michael Scott’s mansion should be affordable on an annual salary of £140,000 in this new financial year.”
“We now call on the fatcats at the local commissioning groups (CCGs) who have awarded themselves substantial salary increases to show that cost-cutting isn’t restricted to front line staff and services.”
Notes for editors:
- The Campaign to Save Mental Health Services in Norfolk and Suffolk was founded in November 2013.
- The Campaign to Save Mental Health Services has hundreds of patients, carers, staff and members of the public on its mailing list and as followers on Twitter. The Campaign’s Facebook Page has received 2,460 likes.
- In January 2016, hundreds of Campaign members marched through Norwich on our March for Mental Health, demanding an end to mental health cuts and discrimination.
- If Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust (NSFT) had received the same percentage budget increases as Norfolk’s largest physical health trust (NNUH), its budget would be nearly £70 million higher than it is today.
- In March 2014, NSFT announced that Michael Scott was joining the mental health trust as its Chief Executive. It later emerged that his annual salary is £175,000. His predecessor, Aidan Thomas, was paid £140,600. Michael Scott was paid between £135,000 and £140,000 per year as Chief Executive of Norfolk Community Health and Care NHS Trust (NCH&C). Michael’s Scott’s NHS pay rose by between 25% and 29.6% when he moved from NCH&C to NSFT and he received £8,000 towards his relocation costs even though he moved from one NHS Chief Executive job in Norwich to another NHS Chief Executive job in Norwich. Michael Scott’s salary increase required NSFT’s Board to break its historic link between the salary of the Chief Executive and those of other staff.
- In October 2011, The Daily Telegraph declared that Michael Scott was an ‘NHS fatcat’: “Michael Scott was chief executive of Westminster PCT until November 2010. A month later, he was hired to run Walsall Hospitals trust, and paid £115,000 for three and a half months: a daily rate of £1,750.”
- NSFT spent £17.25 milllion on termination payments to staff between April 2012 and March 2015 yet has been spending £2 million per month on temporary staff and faces an on-going recruitment crisis.
- In February 2015, NSFT was rated Inadequate by the Care Quality Commission (CQC).
- In February 2015, NSFT was placed in Special Measures by Monitor, the regulator of NHS foundation trusts. NSFT remains in Special Measures despite announcing in its action plan to Monitor to leave special measures within 12 months.
- The number of unexpected deaths at NSFT has increased from 53 in 2012-13 to 139 in 2014-15. In the first six months of 2015-16, there were a further 77 unexpected deaths.
- NSFT is currently the subject of an external inquiry after it emerged NSFT had the highest number of unexpected deaths in the country in the first six months of this year.
Further information on the research by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) can be found by clicking on the image below:
