Following up on the survey that was conducted by NHS Improvement in July 2017 to find out where trusts were using local staff banks, I am writing to you under the Freedom of Information Act to understand where your trust is now in terms of the progress it has made in relation to having already established or is working towards establishing a collaborative bank across your Integrated Care System (‘ICS’) or Sustainability Transformation Partnership (‘STP’) footprint.
As stated in NHS Improvement’s Making effective use of staff banks toolkit, published in December 2017, there is no ‘one size fits all’ model for collaborative banks. They can either cover a specific staff group or all staff groups. They can stretch across two trusts or as wide as an STP or region. They can be a shared digital platform or a shared back office, e.g. payroll or a hub and spoke model or a shared pool of workers or a fully integrated staff bank.
However, rather than list several questions of you, I would instead appreciate it if you would please simply confirm by means of a statement similar to those given below where your Trust is now. For example:
- “our Trust is working collaboratively, but is looking to do so over the next few years with other trusts across the ICS or STP footprint”; or
- “our Trust is working collaboratively with at least one other Trust within the STP footprint but not the footprint as a whole, sharing a digital platform and pool of workers in the following staffing categories: registered nursing & midwifery and medical & dental. We are working towards establishing a fully integrated bank over the next five years”; or
- “our Trust is part of a fully integrated staff bank across our ICS or STP footprint for all staffing categories”.