The boss of a Kirklees based not-for-profit health firm made a healthy profit from his annual pay review.
The Examiner can reveal Robert Flack, chief executive of Locala, received a £26,000 pay rise in 2014 while its 1,200 staff received just a few per cent.
The community nursing firm – which provides nurses for large swathes of the NHS in Kirklees and Calderdale – has confirmed Mr Flack’s pay went up from £95,000 to £121,000 in March 2014.
Trade union Unison has described the hefty rise as an “absolute scandal”.
The 27% pay boost is almost three times more than the £9,000 that Locala donated to charity last year.
It also came at the same time the majority of NHS staff were denied a 1% rise by the Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt – sparking the first NHS strikes in a generation.
Locala’s 2014 accounts reveal the firm’s three other executive directors, Tina Quinn, James Barwick and Janice Boucher, received pay rises totalling £40,000.
The Batley-based firm’s accounts show on top of Mr Flack’s £121,000 pay packet, he received £17,000 pension contributions and will get a £50,000 lump sum on retirement.
Meanwhile overall staff wages dropped £100,000 following Locala’s 2013 voluntary redundancy scheme, with a total of £½m saved.
The accounts further show about £1.7m was saved in 2013/14 through unfilled job vacancies with another £0.9m saved through a cost-cutting programme.
Overall, a surplus of £1.4m was made.
Gary Cleaver, Unison’s Yorkshire spokesman on health, said: “Locala is supposed to be a not-for-profit organisation but people at the top are making a healthy profit while the front line workers are having to take two or three jobs to make ends meet.
“It’s an absolute scandal that chief executives’ pay is so disproportionate to front line NHS workers.
“There’s rising amounts of NHS workers having to use food banks while chief executives’ pay is rising.”
A spokesperson for Locala Community Partnerships said Mr Flack’s salary was determined by a sub-committee made up of non-executive members of the board and was lower than that of the bosses of large NHS hospitals.
A statement from Locala said: “The increases in the chief executive’s and other executive directors’ salaries were only agreed by the sub-committee after extensive discussion, which included consideration of market analysis of remuneration packages of other similar organisations, both NHS and social enterprises.
“The Locala workforce is, and always has been, paid in accordance with the NHS Agenda for Change pay scales to make sure their salaries are in line with other similar organisations.
“The chief executive’s salary is in line with that of an executive director, not a chief executive, of a large NHS acute or mental health trust.
“The Locala executive directors’ salaries are in line with those of senior managers – not directors – in larger trusts.
“This is wholly appropriate given Locala is a smaller organisation.”
Locala was founded in 2011 by managers from NHS Kirklees, which was scrapped in 2013 and replaced by Greater Huddersfield and North Kirklees clinical commissioning groups.
It provides community nursing services in Kirklees, Calderdale and Bradford and some of its staff operate the walk-in centre in A&E at Dewsbury Hospital and Holme Valley Memorial Hospital.
Its main community nursing contract expires in September.
As reported, it is currently bidding against an alliance of NHS hospitals and GPs for a £284m care closer to home contract for the whole of Kirklees.
In a candid interview with the Examiner in 2013 Mr Flack admitted some staff were employed on the controversial zero hour contracts.
“We are an organisation absolutely rooted in public sector values,” he said.
