HOSPITAL bosses are exploring setting up a new company to provide maintenance services - sparking job fears among hundreds of workers.

The move comes as York Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust looks to make £1 million in savings.

The trust has told 979 staff in the facilities and estates department, which includes cleaners, porters and maintenance technicians, it is looking at setting up a limited liability company.

By creating the company, it is hoped multiple existing contracts for maintenance work across North Yorkshire, Hull and East Yorkshire, and North Lincoln and Goole NHS Foundation Trusts, will become a thing of the past and fewer contracts will be needed to carry out the work.

Hospital chiefs say the plans are “exploratory”, no decisions have been made and a company will not be set up unless it is beneficial to everyone.

However, Rachael Maskell, MP for York Central, believes the move is a step towards privatisation and will put jobs and benefits at risk.

A staff notice put up in York Hospital, and seen by The Press, reads: “This year we are short of our target by around £1 million, and the gap persists in future years’ plans.

“Across the country there is a move to create limited liability companies, whole owned by the trusts, and to deliver services from that company where it is beneficial to do so.

“It has been agreed at director level that a limited liability company will be created and this could provide services to all the public sector organisations being Hull and East Yorkshire Trust and North Lincoln and Goole Trust within our sustainable transformation plan footprint.”

One member of the department contacted The Press with concerns about the proposed move, which he believes will result in jobs being lost to make savings. He said: “Everyone fears there will be cuts and they are worried about the terms and conditions of our contracts, like sick pay and holiday pay.

“They will always need staff, but we realise our roles will change and they could cut staff.

“We all want to know what’s going on because people are worrying about it.”

Ms Maskell said the business venture had created “a lot of concern”.

“The staff have only just been told about this, but it seems management were aware of this at the start of the year and they haven’t shared the plans,” she said. “There’s a lot of uncertainty about what this means.

“It’s not just job losses, but if they downgrade to a private company they don’t have to abide by national terms and conditions and we could see a detriment to the services provided.”

Ray Gray, regional officer for Unison, said the union is following the changes with interest, but could not rule out any job losses.

He said: “As far as the staff are concerned at the moment we don’t know what will happen and we will follow it through as it goes along. We don’t know if jobs are going to stay in house. The STP (sustainability and transformation partnership) takes in so many trusts and it’s so huge it’s hard to stay on top of what they are doing.”

Brian Golding, director of estates and facilities, said: “Given the financial pressures that we and our local NHS partners currently have it has been agreed that we will explore creating a limited liability company that could potentially provide certain services to all of the public sector organisations within our region. “The avenues that are being explored are in procurement, primarily in estates contracts which are currently outsourced to third parties (for example lifts maintenance), where the buying power of multiple trusts could be beneficial in terms of savings for each trust, protecting front line services. The limited liability company would only procure and administer those contracts on behalf of the trusts involved. The transfer of in-house functions is not at this stage under consideration, but if it did appear favourable in the future then detailed consultations with those staff likely to be affected would be carried out.”