Anger at £32m bill for moving NHS training jobs to Glasgow

Published on Tuesday 23 January 2007 12:39

THERE was anger today over reports that a decision to relocate nearly 200 NHS jobs from Edinburgh to Glasgow was opposed by 70 per cent of staff and would cost up to £32 million.

A Scottish Executive report shows that shifting NHS Education for Scotland (NES), the training part of Scotland's health service, from its city centre base to the west coast would cost 2.5 million in redundancies alone.

According to an internal survey, released under freedom of information laws, seven out of ten staff would not be prepared to commute or relocate to Glasgow. NES is to move to Glasgow to merge with support agency NHS National Services Scotland (NSS) in a move that would cost both organisations around 11.5m to break lease agreements on their buildings.

More than 2000 civil service and quango jobs have been lost to Edinburgh under the Executive's relocation policy, designed to spread the benefits of devolution across the country.

This includes the controversial decision to move Scottish Natural Heritage headquarters from Edinburgh to Inverness.

Susan Deacon, Labour MSP for Edinburgh East and Musselburgh, who previously called for a moratorium and review of the relocation policy, said: "It is worrying but not surprising that we once again are getting the full picture of the consequences of the relocation policy after the decision has been made.

"You have to take each decision on a case by case basis and there are arguably occasions when relocation is appropriate.

"But I am still concerned these decisions are being made without a clear picture of the cost to the taxpayer and how it affects the staff involved."

The outline business case on the NES and NSS merger and relocation said that overall it is expected to cost 32m more than maintaining the status quo.

The report goes on to warn that the move could "significantly disadvantage and displace many NES staff".

The total bill for redundancy payments, travel costs and hiring new staff could top 5m in real terms, according to the report.

City leader Ewan Aitken said: "There just seems to be a complete lack of transparency with the relocation policy.

"Sometimes moving jobs out might make sense but you can't make sense of it if you don't see the criteria on which they make these decisions. The costs and the views of the staff appear to being ignored and in the end this will cost not only the capital city of Scotland but also the rest of the Scottish taxpayers."

Yesterday it was revealed some civil servants are only working four-hour days because they are paid for travel time to Glasgow.

Transport Scotland workers have needed to make the journey west since 200 jobs were relocated from the Capital last year.

Every employee of the agency who needs to commute to work is getting the difference in travelling expenses paid, and they are reportedly allowed to take the travel time off their normal working hours.

That has led to claims some staff are working for as little as four hours, and also being reimbursed for train ticket costs.

The overall cost of travel expenses at Transport Scotland is thought to be in the region of 5000 a week.

An Executive spokeswoman said: "Ministers made a commitment not long after devolution that there should be a dispersal scheme."