Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, when he plans to award the contract to appoint a provider of Liverpool community trust services; and what steps his Department is taking to monitor the application of NHS improvement rules relating to the (a) voting system used by Liverpool Community Health (LCH) staff members and (b) number of interim LCH posts created by Alder Hey since it was awarded the interim management contract for LCH.

NHS Improvement is currently running a competitive process to select a National Health Service organisation to acquire Liverpool Community Health services. They aim to announce the preferred provider in October 2017 and – subject to approval by NHS Improvement of a business case – hope to transfer services to the new provider on 1 April 2018.

NHS Improvement agreed a process of staff engagement with Liverpool Community Health Staff Side representatives. This included prospective providers presenting their proposals to Liverpool Community Health staff followed by the opportunity for Liverpool Community Health staff to ask questions. Staff were then invited to complete a feedback form giving their views on their preferred provider. This information will be available to the NHS Improvement Evaluation Panel but is not part of the Panel’s formal scoring and ranking of the proposals.

Alder Hey has appointed to only one interim role since the commencement of the management contract on 1 May, a senior communications advisor. This role was to cover a gap in capacity following the departure of the previous Director of Communications, so was not a post created by Alder Hey. As part of the management contract, senior roles at Liverpool Community Health have been taken on by the Alder Hey Executive Team. However, this was not possible for the Communications post, as the job holder as at 1 May was about to leave the organisation.