Last month I noted that the anti-smoking group ASH was recruiting a new member of staff.
And not any old employee. The job title - NHS strategic lead - was very specific and applicants were told that the role was ‘to engage the NHS in action to tackle smoking’ and ‘to deliver on an NHS England funded project’.
The salary was said to be ‘£50-60,000, depending on experience’ but that still left more questions than answers.
Since it involved a publicly-funded body and therefore public money I submitted a freedom of information request.
I can now reveal that the total projected cost of the project, and the sum awarded to ASH by NHS England to work on it, is £95,000.
The post of NHS strategic lead, whose salary will be funded by the grant, ‘is to support delivery of the grant and will be funded from the grant award’.
‘Grant activity’ is to be delivered by 31st March 2024.
NHS England add that ‘ASH were the successful bidder for this grant’ but they don't say how many other bidders there were.
Instead, in response to my request for ‘details of the tendering/application process including whether bids by other groups or organisations were considered before ASH was chosen to work on the project’, all NHS England will say is:
This grant was competed via a public process, all applications submitted were considered as part of this process.
Grant details, they add, can be found on the Contracts Finder website.
There are four documents (which I have not yet read in forensic detail) but I’m mildly intrigued by the fact that the job was published/advertised on September 2 with a closing date of September 14.
According to the Contracts Finder website the grant contract start date was September 27, just two weeks later, which begs another question.
If candidates had to be interviewed and the successful applicant was already in a job, would they not have had to give several weeks’ notice before starting their new role with ASH?
Or is there some other explanation?
Finally, in reply to my query about an evaluation process, NHS England replied:
Regular reporting and progress of deliverables will be monitored throughout the grant duration.
I’m not entirely sure what the 'deliverables' are but here's the description that appears on the Contracts Finder website under Grant - Supporting the NHS Long Term Plan Tobacco Priorities:
NHS England is commissioning additional support for implementation of the tobacco long term plan commitments. This prospectus outlines a requirement for practical and expert support for tobacco LTP implementation. As clinical support is already in place, the grant would be focused on the work needed to drive system, organisational and regional change, including building links with and making the case to local government [my italics].
So what we have here is a publicly-funded body using public money to fund a partisan pressure group to lobby local government.
Meanwhile we’re told the NHS is strapped for cash.
You couldn’t make it up.
Below: Leadership role will seek to ‘engage’ NHS leaders …
