Gosport War Memorial Hospital staff ‘ecstatic’ as £40,000 of missing pay set to be handed out
The porters and domestic staff at Gosport War Memorial Hospital were owed around £40,000 under the NHS’ Agenda for Change scheme – which had previously been refused to them by employer, Compass Medirest.
The Agenda for Change is the national payment framework for all NHS staff – with a payrise of 92p in April 2018 never reaching the workers’ pockets.
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Hide AdThe firm had previously told The News that these staff members were not eligible for the scheme.
Now Compass Medirest has agreed to pay the workers what they were owed and the money will be given to them in their next pay packet.
Yvonne Caswell, 69, is one of the staff members at the hospital who had been missing out.
She said: ‘We found out about this earlier today. It’s brilliant news – we've got exactly what we have been campaigning for.
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Hide Ad‘Everybody is over the moon about it and we are all looking forward to pay day next week.’
Gosport MP Caroline Dinenage worked alongside the hospital staff to get the issue resolved.
She says Compass Medirest ‘held their hands up’ when she got in touch, and is pleased to see the outcome.
Ms Dinenage said: ‘Once I brought it to their attention, Compass Medirest said they would sort it out.
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Hide Ad‘Clearly it shouldn’t have been necessary for us to get in touch but it’s good to see that a resolution has been reached.
‘They admitted their mistake and rectified it so fair play to them.’
Mrs Caswell added: ‘I would like to thank Caroline on behalf of all the staff for her hard work in this troubled time.
‘She’s really done her best to help us out and we are absolutely ecstatic about the result.’
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Hide AdIn response to Ms Dinenage's inquiry, a spokesman from Compass Medirest said: ‘The agreement made by the previous employer of these individuals was not formally recorded and, therefore, we did not have the information required to process this change.
‘We have notified the employees concerned that this pay increase will be processed and back-dated and will be included within their salaried payment on February 1.’