Underfunded NHS clinical commissioning groups could be spending over £16 million between them, for advice from management consultants on the secretive shake-up of health and social care in England.

Unite, with 100,000 members in the NHS, said that health secretary Jeremy Hunt needs to come clean on the spending on management consultants in relation to the 44 Sustainability and Transformation Plans (STPs) for England.

Unite calculated that £15 million is the likely cost, after the media revealed that NHS chiefs in Coventry and Warwickshire had forked out £343,000 to PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) for advice on saving money in their local STP plan.

However this may well be a significant underestimate. The British Medical Association has just reported that health leaders drawing up the North Central London STP have paid £2.3m to eight different companies – including accountants Deloitte and management consultants McKinsey – for services stretching from ‘administrative support’ and ‘financial modelling’ to ‘communications support’.

Upper Calder Valley Plain Speaker reported in October last year that the 11 West Yorkshire and Harrogate Clinical Commissioning Groups had between them paid £378K to management consultancy company Attain  to set up and run the West Yorkshire Sustainability and Transformation Plan Programme Management Office. Continue reading →