Bad Subcos: iFM Bolton

As NHS workers in Dorset face the threat of being moved into a new SubCo, it's crucial we learn from what’s happened elsewhere. The story of Bolton NHS Foundation Trust is a powerful example. There, staff were promised their pay and conditions would be protected when transferred to a wholly owned subsidiary. But within a year, those promises were broken and hundreds of workers had to go on strike just to win back what they were owed. Their fight shows what can happen when trusts use SubCos to cut costs at the expense of the workforce. We must not repeat the same mistakes here.

Bolton NHS Foundation Trust set up a wholly-owned company (Integrated Facilities Management Bolton Ltd, “iFM Bolton”) in 2016-17 to run cleaning, portering and catering at Royal Bolton Hospital. Staff were told their NHS pay and conditions would be protected – in fact iFM signed a 2017 agreement to pay the full NHS Agenda-for-Change rates. Instead, by 2018 hundreds of iFM workers (cleaners, porters, caterers, security staff) were still on the National Living Wage (about £7.83/hr), nearly £2,000 a year less than colleagues doing the same jobs in neighbouring hospitals. This was seen as a clear broken promise: as UNISON’s Kevin Lucas put it, “iFM Bolton managers made a promise to their staff that they would pay the NHS rates. They just need to fulfil that promise”.

Timeline of the dispute

• July 2016–Jan 2017: Bolton NHSFT incorporates iFM Bolton (operational Jan 2017) to bring estates and facilities services in-house. The subsidiary takes on the hospital’s cleaning, catering and porter teams previously provided by a private firm. Union notes iFM agreed in 2017 to honour national NHS pay scales.
• April 2018: A new national pay deal lifts the lowest NHS rate to about £8.93/hr. iFM Bolton staff (around 600 people) remain on £7.83/hr – about £2,000 a year behind their NHS counterparts.
• Aug–Sept 2018: UNISON ballots 600+ iFM staff on industrial action. Members attend packed meetings and overwhelmingly vote to reject iFM’s updated pay offer (still below NHS rates). They instruct the union to press on with a strike for equal pay.
• 11–12 Oct 2018: First 48-hour strike at Bolton. Hundreds of cleaners, porters, catering and security staff employed by iFM walk out for fair pay. Workers formed picket lines from 7am and held rallies in Bolton town centre. Pickets carried banners reading “One job, one rate – NHS pay now” and chanted “We’re NHS workers and we should be paid NHS rates!”.
• Oct 23, 2018: iFM Bolton management caves in. After two days of action (and a threatened second strike), the company agrees to apply the full Agenda-for-Change pay deal to all iFM staff. The lowest wage jumps from £7.83 to £8.95 immediately (reaching £9.92 by 2020), with back-pay to April 2018 – a rise worth about £2,000 this year for the lowest-paid.

Victory after the strike

The Bolton strike ended in a clear win for staff. Within days, iFM Bolton agreed a new three-year pay deal matching NHS rates. Every iFM worker got a substantial increase, backdated to April. UNISON hailed the result, as General Secretary Dave Prentis said, Bolton’s victory “should send a strong signal to any NHS trusts who think creating a wholly owned subsidiary will allow them to short-change their staff over pay.” With the new deal in place, the lowest-paid staff saw around £2,000 more in their 2018–19 pay packets, and a path to further rises by 2020.

Bolton’s case is part of a nationwide trend. In recent years dozens of NHS trusts have set up “subcos” to cut costs, often attracting opposition. Union campaigns in Bradford, Chesterfield, Stafford and elsewhere have similarly fought back (for example Bradford hospitals staff staged a two-week strike in 2019 over a two-tier pay proposal, ultimately forcing the trust to drop its subco plan). As UNISON has warned, these schemes create a divided workforce outside the NHS’s terms. In Bolton’s words, it “defies logic, common sense and fair play” to pay people less just because they work for a separate company. Bolton staff and their supporters say the message is clear: hospital bosses must not be allowed to split the NHS staff and cut pay, and the fight for one NHS and one workforce goes on.