NHS trust spends £1m covering strikes over holiday pay dispute

Lancashire Teaching Hospitals Trust (LTHT) has spent more than £1 million — roughly £60,000 per week — on outsourcing to cover striking blood sciences staff, according to Unite. The workers say the trust owes them overtime and absence pay and has failed to fix the problem.

Staff in the East Lancashire Blood Sciences department began industrial action on 2 November, with walkouts scheduled across four consecutive weeks: 2–6, 9–13, 16–20 and 23–27 November. They're based at Royal Blackburn Teaching Hospital and Burnley General Teaching Hospital, but employed and contracted directly by LTHT — a separate body that also runs Royal Preston Hospital and Chorley and South Ribble Hospital.

What's behind the dispute?

Unite, which represents the workers, blames the way staff are contracted within the NHS for the holiday pay irregularities. The employees believe they've missed out on owed overtime and absence pay, and that the trust hasn't resolved the underlying issues despite months of wrangling.

The union says LTHT did agree to make a settlement offer at one point, but no further communication followed. That broken thread, in Unite's telling, is what pushed the dispute into sustained strike action through November.

What has the strike cost so far?

The £1 million-plus outsourcing bill breaks down to about £60,000 per week, Unite said. That's public money spent on mitigating the duties of striking workers rather than settling the dispute — a point the union's leadership pressed hard.

"This trust has long-running issues with industrial relations," said Sharon Graham, Unite's general secretary. "Rather than making real efforts to resolve this dispute, the trust management is breaking yet more promises and wasting thousands of pounds of public funds trying to undermine it."

Could the dispute be settled locally?

Unite insists it could. Helen Flanagan, Unite's regional officer, framed the standoff as a local matter that the trust has unnecessarily prolonged.

"Unite has been clear that this is a local dispute, but the trust have prolonged the action for months, focusing on nationally used NHS systems," Flanagan said. "A negotiated settlement to end the dispute is now solely in the hands of decision makers at the trust."

LTHT was contacted for comment before publication but no response appears in the original report.

For HR and employee relations leaders, the case is a live study in how contracting structures inside a single health system can create pay disputes that outlast multiple settlement attempts. With four weeks of strikes running and a £60,000-per-week cover bill accruing, the pressure on the trust's decision makers to return to the table will only grow as November continues.