Trust spend with management consultants tops £2.5m

The Pennine Acute Hospital Trust, which runs the Rochdale Infirmary, has spent a further £640,876.80 with a management consultancy firm, bringing their total spend to £2,545,491.80 in less than 12 months.

The staggering figures come at a time when the Trust is trying to save £43million.

In a three month period between December and April they spent £1,241,000 with Ernst and Young.

In August they spent a further £663,615 with Ernst and Young.

The latest figures for September show the Trust made two payments to Ernst and Young one of £329,318.29 and a second of £311,558.51, making a total of £640,876.80.

Health campaigner, Councillor Jean Ashworth slammed the figures as “crazy.”

She said: “It is just going beyond a joke now.

“It is horrendous, when they are closing beds and closing wards and they are spending this money to be told how to do it.”

A spokesperson for Pennine Acute Trust said: “Transforming for Excellence (TfE) is the Trust’s quality improvement and efficiency programme. It is the method through which we aim to transform and improve services to maintain safe, high quality, reliable and sustainable services through this economic downturn and beyond and achieve the necessary cost efficiency savings required. 

“We have recently set up a new team in the Trust by seconding members of our own staff to work closely with a team of management consultants from Ernst and Young and with staff in implementing the service transformation and efficiencies required to meet the £43 million cost reductions which the Trust faces this year.

"We understand why some people might question why we are spending money on management consultants when we have a £43m savings target this year, but we believe it is sometimes necessary to spend up front to make larger savings in the long term.

“Other local public service bodies have made use of management consultancy expertise and we are no different.

“We need additional support, skills and expertise to work alongside our staff to identify where we can transform our services to improve the care we provide and in turn make the necessary savings.  Using management consultants means that we can get the extra support and skills we need for specific periods of time without the added cost of hiring additional permanent staff.

“The TfE programme has helped the Trust make huge savings, enabling the Trust’s income and expenditure to balance last year.

“So far, we have successfully identified £40 million of cost savings opportunities. The challenge will be to achieve these savings. Without the additional support it is unlikely that we would have been able to do this.

“By working alongside Ernst and Young, our own staff are developing the skills necessary to run our own programmes in the future. This is not a resource we will be committing to use on a permanent basis.”