NHS Spends £46 Million Per Year on 'Non-Jobs'

NHS Spends £46 Million Per Year on 'Non-Jobs'

The NHS is wasting £46 million on ‘unnecessary’ jobs, including a ‘car park environmental officer’, ‘art curator’ and ‘green label development coordinator’, according to a new report.

The TaxPayers’ Alliance say that £36 million was wasted on 826 spin doctors, while £6.8 million was spent on ‘equality and diversity’ staff. A further £3.5 million was spent on ‘green’ officers.

In 2009, NHS bosses were ordered to slash the cost of spin as part of £20bn efficiency saving package.

As part of the package of reductions, one NHS Trust, Western Cheshire Primary Care Trust slashed spending on public relations by more than 70 percent. Had other bodies followed their lead this figure would be £32m lower than it is, enough for around 1500 junior nurses. 

This money could have paid for an extra 1,129 nurses, according to the report.

There are total of 1,229 unnecessary staff in the NHS, some of them on salaries up to £90,000. Positions include ‘art coordinator’, ‘carbon manager’, ‘play and communication worker’, and ‘EU office director’.

West and South Yorkshire and Bassetlaw Commissioning Support Unit spend over £1 million on hiring 36 public relations workers.

Jonathan Isaby, chief executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: “Taxpayers expect the health budget to be spent on real doctors, not spin doctors.

“The NHS employs far too many people in jobs that do nothing to deliver frontline patient care.”

Nigel Adams MP, said: “I cannot understand the point of these spin doctors, the NHS should be about patients not press releases. How many nurses and doctors could we fund by cutting out this waste? 

“I think its time for the NHS to seriously look at itself and decide whether spending money in this way is a sensible use of taxpayers cash.”

A Department of Health spokesman told the Express: “There are now over 20,500 fewer managers, senior managers and admin staff, and nearly 14,500 more professionally qualified clinicians than there were in 2010.”

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