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The coalition’s white paper on NHS reform stated that “in future, all individual employers will have the right, as foundation trusts have now, to determine pay for their own staff,” suggesting that more and more trusts will be released from the Agenda for Change framework.

But Jon Restell, chief executive of Managers in Partnership, which represents healthcare managers, expressed doubts about the development.

“Local pay bargaining is resource-intensive and does require a particular level of skills. It is also potentially wasteful to have duplicated discussions around core principles, and for organisations to start developing their own pay grading systems to support local pay bargaining.”

He added he was confident that the national pay agreement would not be entirely dismantled. “What employment security looks like and what the implications are for pay in the NHS is a discussion that needs to be nationally led,” he said.

Mike Emmott, employee relations adviser at the CIPD, agreed that a complete move to local pay agreements could be slow to materialise and that many local health-sector employers would continue to use national contracts as a template.

“While we broadly support moves towards local management freedom, I am not confident that local NHS pay deals will take off, especially in a climate where resources are constrained,” he said.

“Pitching the pay rate at the level of the local market is getting value for money, but this does not come without cost. The necessary skills are a real concern – there are very limited resources dedicated within individual trusts to handle pay issues.”

However, the benefits and freedom provided by local pay deals are “incredible”, according to Sandra Le Blanc, HR director at Southend University NHS Foundation Trust, which opted out of the national Agenda for Change framework four years ago.

She said local pay had allowed the trust not only to compete successfully for healthcare staff in the region but also secure jobs in the face of budget cuts. “This enables us to make changes to our pay structure where we see fit and top up as we need to,” Le Blanc explained. “When we are not in a financial position to award as much, then we can pare back to try to secure jobs.”

She added that 95 per cent of the trust’s staff had continued to choose local pay deals when given the option of aligning with national pay agreements. “We empower staff by allowing them to make an individual decision, which is very unusual in the public sector,” Le Blanc said.

But she acknowledged that designing local agreements would be challenging for HR teams more used to working within national frameworks. “Negotiating pay and conditions with unions is a new skillset and one you probably don’t find as much in the NHS.”

 Source:People Management: Michelle Stevens