York Hospital staff threaten revolt over loss of free Christmas taxis - Staff told to cycle from Selby to York, claims whistleblower

York Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust is cutting the service, which helped staff get to work when trains and buses stop running over the festive period.

A source told The Press: "Some staff from Selby have been told to either cycle or walk on Christmas Day."

The trust says the free taxis were never official policy and had only been in place for a few workers at York Hospital.

If it was formally implemented across the trust's ten sites, it would cost up to an extra £10,000, but funding cuts meant this was not possible.

The hospital faced a staffing crisis last Christmas, when staff sickness and a rise in patient numbers created huge pressures, and a source said some staff were now refusing to work this year.

They said: "Memos have been going around. It's a big thing at the moment. It's not just in York, it's across the whole trust. It's basically due to funding.

"All the staff are quite angry and and people are saying they are not going to come to work.

"People rely on public transport, but it's not going to be running.

"A few staff have been threatened that if they don't turn up for work, they will face disciplinaries.

"I'm quite angry about it. You've got nurses who come and work through the night and have got to find their own way home."

Tony Pearson, regional head of health for Unison in Yorkshire and Humberside, which represents many trust staff, said: "We appreciate the financial difficulties that NHS trusts find themselves in which have been caused by the Government's continued underfunding of the NHS.

"The sums involved in the scheme of things are not large, but our low paid members will suffer great hardship as a result.

"They have ensured years of pay freezes and many of them who depend on public transport are low paid.

"We will formally request that the trust reverses this decision, which in our view is not justified."

A spokeswoman for York Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust said: “In previous years, a small number of staff at York Hospital only, who have been working on Christmas Day, Boxing Day or New Year’s Day, have not been charged for taxis to and from work.

"This cost has been picked up by the hospital. This was not widely or consistently applied across the hospital or the rest of the organisation, with most staff probably not even aware.

"This has never been an official Trust policy. Essentially the Trust faced a dilemma; in the interests of fairness and equity we could offer this to all staff working on these dates across the whole Trust and all of its sites at an estimated increased cost of between £5,000 and £10,000, or bring the practice to a close.

"Whilst we would like to be able to make this good will gesture, we have reluctantly had to take the decision to no longer pay for staff taxis.

"In our current financial situation, with a growing deficit, we cannot allocate scarce NHS funds to this. We will be working with managers to share information with staff about lift sharing and other options, and anyone who will have genuine difficulty getting to work should speak to their manager.

"Our patients will not be affected by this change. Given this has not been widely applied in the past this issue applies to a small number of staff, with only around 20 inward journeys and 20 outward journeys being booked on each of the holidays last year.

"This represents a small minority of journeys made to work by our staff.”