NHS Forth Valley have been accused of “secrecy” by a local MSP after the health board failed to respond to a request for information on levels of paid overtime.
Mid Scotland and Fife MSP Alexander Stewart raised the issue after NHS Forth Valley was the only health board in the country which did not provide any details for a Freedom of Information seeking to discover the number of hours and total bill paid for staff overtime.
The request, from the Scottish Conservatives, revealed a whopping paid overtime bill of almost £230m over the five year period between 2017/18 and 2022/23 - with workers carrying out more than 11m hours of paid overtime.
Mr Stewart slammed NHS Forth Valley’s lack of response to the FOI request and revealed he had written to chief executive Cathie Cowan in an effort to find out answers.
He said: “I am dismayed – but not entirely surprised – that NHS Forth Valley has failed to provide its own figures in support of these statistics.
“This begs the question as to what – if at all – they are attempting to hide by remaining completely unresponsive. To this end, I have written to their chief executive with a request for an explanation as to why, out of all our NHS boards in Scotland, they were the only ones remaining silent.”
In response, an NHS Forth Valley spokesperson revealed it was complying with the FOI request.
The spokesperson said: “We are in the process of finalising the information requested and the FOI response will be issued shortly.”
In the FOI data, it is revealed that more than 175,000 staff took paid overtime at some point over the five year period - with just over 2.4m hours being racked up by staff in the last completed year measured in 2021/22.
The trend looks likely to continue into 2022/23 - the partial figures for the current year show a total of 24,131 staff taking on paid overtime, adding up to £15.3m worth of paid overtime hours to this point.
