There are 21 air ambulance charities around the UK forming part of the UK’s frontline emergency response services, making lifesaving missions to around 80 people a day in urgent need of pre-hospital lifesaving care.
However, despite working very closely with the NHS, air ambulances are charities and are not part of the NHS family. Air ambulances are reliant on the NHS for many of their clinical staff who are often seconded for a few years at a time before returning to their work within the NHS.
We acted for Midlands Air Ambulance in advising it in relation to a substantial change to its operating model enabling it to:
- Acquire its own CQC registration for its operations;
- Employ its own staff directly, moving away from a ‘secondment model’;
- Professionalise its service, further enhancing the training and qualifications of its clinical and flight teams;
- Deliver new services to partner organisations.
We advised the charity on the terms of its existing partnership agreement with the regional NHS Ambulance Trust and, working together with them, developed from scratch the new operating model embodied in a thoroughly revised and updated model.
Involving, as it did, substantial change to many of the staff working at the Air Ambulance, we advised throughout on the TUPE implications and a strategy for direct employment of staff.
The move away from NHS terms and arrangements needed to be replicated as far as possible and we advised the charity on its obligations and solutions of particular issued raised. In addition, we advised on new healthcare specialist employment agreements for air medics and nurses.
With the change of employment status for many staff we also worked with the Charity in relation to the pensions arrangements the staff would enjoy in the NHS scheme. We assisted the charity in making and ultimately securing Employing Authority status to ensure continued access to the NHS Pensions Scheme for staff.
The result in 2022 was successfully establishing the charity with its new operating model as part of its drive to professionalised and enhance the service it provides.
