Plans for strategic health authorities to take local ownership for shaping and delivering the NHS IT programme have become bogged down due to central wrangling and may not not be implemented before the summer.
NHS Connecting for Health and England’s ten SHAs are continuing to work through the details of the ‘local ownership programme’ (NLOP) two weeks after the 1 April transfer deadline passed with many CfH staff and financial resources yet to be transferred.
Responsibilities and staff may now not be fully transferred from local Connecting for Health cluster offices and the central Leeds office until July.
Details of whether staff will be transferred in one or two stages had yet to be agreed by the end of March and SHAs say they are unwilling to take all CfH staff – many of whom are on higher pay grades than locally employed NHS counterparts.
A March board paper from South East Coast strategic health authority says that national negotiations are continuing on NLOP. "The initial intention was to make the substantive changes in April. The process is now running more slowly, with a view to transferring responsibilities and staff to SHAs by July."
The document makes clear that key issues have yet to be resolved nationally "discussions continue with the Department of Health about how more resources are devolved to SHAs".
Another board paper, this one from NHS North East, also indicates that national negotiations on NLOP have got bogged down, particularly around the transfer of CfH financial resources and staff.
It questions, however, where more than a notional transfer of responsibilities will take place by 1 April, "it is unlikely that all finance and HR products will be in place on this date to ensure human and financial resources transfer at the same time".
Addressing finance the paper says. "To date work on the [financial] framework has not progressed as planned and there remain a number of issues without resolution." Similarly on the HR framework the paper reports: "The HR framework has not progressed as planned".
One of the main unresolved issues is the "process of transferring CfH staff to NHS". Sticking points include differences in pay grades. "Connecting for Health staff generally appear to be on higher grades than NHS counterparts."
The document also makes clear that the SHAs believe only some NPfIT positions should be to CfH staff. "The SHAs consider that only new and extant vacancies in NPfIT positions should be open to CfH staff. That is, existing NHS staff conducting current tasks should not be at risk."
The NHS North East document also highlights the differing views among the SHAs on how decentralised NPfIT staff should be after NLOP. "Whereas we favour a de-centralised approach, other SHAs are favouring large (25-40 staff) central teams at SHA level".
Despite growing delays to NLOP an exclusive E-Health Insider survey of England’s the ten SHA’s has found that all say they met the 31 March deadline for completing local IM&T plans. However, many details still need to be resolved before they can be published.
During late March, E-Health Insider contacted every SHA during and asked how their plans to take on local ownership of the NHS IT programme were progressing. None said plans were yet ready for publication.