The trust running St Helier and Epsom hospitals in South London and Surrey has admitted it has deprived hundreds of its lowest paid workers their rightful NHS pensions for up to seven years due to a major blunder by its management in signing them up to the wrong scheme.

A letter sent out two weeks ago to catering staff, porters, delivery and transport drivers and cleaners admits it made ” a significant error” when it took the workers back in house in 2018 and 2021 from private contractors.

The move at the time was welcomed by staff as it gave the lowest paid staff higher pay than the going rate by private firms.

It has now emerged that instead of automatically signing staff up to the NHS pension scheme the workers were signed up to an inferior government backed workplace pension scheme, the National Employment Savings Trust (NEST).This pension scheme is aimed at small businesses as well as large private employers.

The letter says that benefits and contributions to the NHS pension scheme are higher.

The trust now part of the St George’s, Epsom and St Helier University Trust employs 5000 staff in the two hospitals – a sizeable number will be low paid staff. The trust will have to compensate workers for this error and has called in the Government Actuary Department to help estimate the scale of the problem which could cost several million pounds at a time when the NHS is squeezed in trying to bring down waiting lists.

The letter also reveals that the new trust has ordered a review of all staff contracts, pay and conditions as a result of the error. It now appears that there are differences between staff doing the same jobs with some receiving extra days leave than others and others on different pay rates.

There is also a suggestion of racism over Sunday working for low paid workers One rate seems to apply for many people from black and ethnic minority workers of £13.86 an hour while Agenda for Change workers, who are mainly white, get £26.31 an hour.

The trust has one of the highest paid chief executives in the country, Jacqueline Totterdell, who gets £340,000 a year. She and her predecessor, Daniel Elkeles, now chief executive of NHS Providers, were in charge when these errors were made. Jacqueline Totterdell is planning to step down as the NHS faces a big reorganisation under the health secretary, Wes Streeting.

The letter is here: