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Robert Flack Managing Director Kirklees Community Healthcare Services Beckside Court Batley WF17 5PW 16th December 2009 Dear Robert Business Readiness Guidance Assurance Visit Thank you for submitting your confirmation letter regarding PCT assurance that you have achieved all indicators within the Business Readiness Guidance. I know this has involved a significant amount of work across the PCT but especially within the provider arm; at times I’m sure it has been a frustrating journey over issues often outside of your control – thanks again to you and your team for all your work. Our last Business Readiness Guidance Assurance visit seems quite some time ago now but I’m writing to thank you and your team for the preparation you had clearly put in to the meeting and for sharing with us your excellent continued progress against the Business Readiness Guidance requirements at that stage. We are confident that you have met the October milestone to achieve the Business Readiness Guidance to NHS Yorkshire & the Humber’s requirements. You shared with us your progress since our last meeting across all indicators; we also took a more in depth assessment of you progress against the 15 Human Resources Indicators. We noted on the financial indicators that you were well on your way to achieving the necessary level of separation and segmentation to achieve the October milestones. Given your finance lead was relatively new in post and
new to the NHS Jackie Williams did offer some further support to her outside of the visit if required. You have been developing a first draft Integrated Business Plan covering a 3 to 5 year period; this would be considered by the Provider Services Committee for sign off later in the autumn for the IBP to be operational from April 2010. A high level financial plan to accompany the IBP was currently under development. In terms of Information Management and Technology you shared with us your progress on increasing the availability of laptops for all community based staff and your keen interest in ensuring a mobile technology solution to improve data collection and reliability. In summary on human resource indicators you had made good progress on all the indicators with • regular reporting of Key HR Performance indicators to your Provider Services Committee on a quarterly basis • An SLA had been in operation and was recently reviewed for a HR service shared across two PCTs • Within the HR support there was a dedicated team to support the two PCT’s provider arms with each PCT having a dedicated HR lead • You had largely adopted the PCT’s HR Policies and had a prioritised plan in place to review those policies; you had already developed flexible working and home working policies. • Whilst there two outstanding staff liabilities it was agreed that the PCT would cover these cases, and in principle cover all staff liabilities until formal separation of the provider arm. • A single workforce strategy was in place for the PCT; as part of the IBP development you were currently working on a clinical quality strategy that would drive workforce strategy; this was expected to complete for the end of the current financial year. • Within your HR service level agreement it was felt there was a fair allocation of resources with different dedicated staff servicing provider and commissioner; there was also a small shared team. • The provider HR service was “semi-outsourced” given it was hosted by an NHS organisation delivering a service to two PCTs. You were able to evidence strong levels of staff engagement with a number of well attended staff briefings seminars and workshops. All staff clearly had direct access to you to give comment or ask questions if they wished. Trade Union engagement had been largely positive to date with active engagement from staff side representatives and TU officers. You will now be aware of the email circulated to all PCT CE’s regarding next steps and of the requirement within the 2010/2011 Operating Framework that by March 2010 PCTs must have agreed with SHAs the proposals for the future organisational structure of all current PCT provided community services. I am confident this timescale will not cause Kirklees PCT any
significant problems and look forward to our continued working together to get us through the period running up to March 2010. Yours sincerely,
I G McInnes TCS Programme Director c.c.
Mike Potts, CE