Team Restructuring Proposals

On Wednesday, 30th August, 2006 the management of the NHS Blood and Transplant Authority proposed a major restructuring of the way blood collection teams are organised.

One of the main proposals is to cut the number of collection teams from over 100 to 38. This will be brought about by merging teams that are geographically close together. For example, it is proposed that the Mitcham team, the Epsom team and the Tooting clinic will form a new team called the South London team. This may offer more flexibility to staff who may be able to move from one part of the team to another if the session times or locations are more convenient to them, but it is not clear how they will get to these sessions or if their journey will be fully paid for.

It is proposed that several posts will disappear including the deputy regional collection manager and the regional nurse posts. These will be replaced in part by a new area team manager post at band 7 and a senior team nurse post also at band 7. There will also be a reduction in the number of band 6 team managers as only one band 6 session manager will be required for each area team.

It is also proposed that 27 nursing posts (out of a total of 76 redundancies) will be lost but in an answer to a question I put to Jackie Morgan, the nursing establishment will be based as much on the number of sessions a team does as the collection target. If a team does numerous small sessions with mini mobiles and small hall sessions, they will need a larger establishment than a team that does mainly large hall sessions.

There are no proposals at the moment to change the role of the donor care supervisors or the donor carers I and II. There will probably be further expansion in the area of donor deferral.

The marketing and session planning functions will be merged and they will be more closely attached to a specific area team.

Some questions have been raised about the slotting in process. It is not clear that it is always appropriate and also brings up the issue of equal opportunities.

The full proposals will be on the NHSBT Intranet (which should be available at all team bases) and a helpline is opening on Monday, 4th September 2006 on feature net 0515.

It was announced that the thirty day consultation period began on 30th August 2006 (this is the legal minimum when less than 100 redundancies are proposed) but the proposals have not been officially presented to the NJSC so the consultation period cannot be considered to have started yet. In practical terms, it is likely to take several months before the proposals are fully debated, revised, accepted (or rejected) and implemented.

If you have any questions or comments about these proposals, either post them on this blog or phone (or text) me on 07974 176 031.