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What we spend/how

Here you'll find all of the Trust's financial information relating to projected and actual income, expenditure, procurement, contracts and external audit.

Please note that the Annual Accounts are included within our Annual Report each year and can be accessed here.

Annual Accounts

The Director of Finance on behalf of NEAS will:

• Prepare financial returns in accordance with the accounting policies and guidance given by the Department of Health and the Treasury, the NEAS accounting policies, and generally accepted accounting practice.
• Prepare and submit annual financial reports to the Department of Health certified in accordance with current guidelines.
• Submit financial returns to the Department of Health for each financial year in accordance with the timetable prescribed by the Department of Health.  
• The NEAS annual accounts must be audited by an auditor appointed by the Council of Governors. The NEAS audited annual accounts must be presented to a public meeting and made available to the public.

Staff pay and grading structures

As with other NHS organisations, NEAS has a single pay system in operation, known as 'Agenda for Change'.  It applies to all directly employed NHS Staff with the exception of doctors, dentists and some very senior managers/directors. This means that everyone doing the same job are paid on the same pay scales. The latest National pay scales and salary information can be found online at NHS Employers: https://www.nhsemployers.org/resources

Agenda for Change provides NHS organisations with a range of typical job profiles, these are matched locally by trained job evaluators, to allocate a national pay band, this helps us to ensure fairness and equal pay for those working within similar job roles/responsibilities, across the NHS.

Most staff within NEAS are operationally based and details of typical pay bandings are set out below:

Executive Directors and Non-Executive Directors are remunerated outside of the Agenda for Change pay bandings. Further details on salaries / benefits and the basis for remuneration are published in the Trust's Annual Report (Remuneration Report section).

Trade Union facility time

The Trade Union (Facility time Publication Requirements) Regulations 2017 took effect on 1 April 2017 and requires employers, to publish certain information on trade union officials and facility time on their website.

NHS employers are subject to the new rules if they have at least one employee who is a trade union official, a trade union learning representative or a safety representative.

Facility time covers duties carried out for a Trade Union or as a learning representative, for example, accompanying an employee to a disciplinary hearing or grievance meeting. It also covers training carried out under the Health and Safety at work Act 1974.

The Regulations require the following information to be published: 

• The number of employees who were relevant union officials during the relevant period, and the number of full time equivalent employees
• The percentage of time spent on facility time for each relevant union official
• The percentage of the pay bill spent on facility time
• The number of hours spent by relevant union officials on paid trade union activities as a percentage of total paid facility time hours

This information is available to view here

National Fraud Initiative

North East Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust is required to protect the public funds it administers. It may share information provided to it with other bodies responsible for auditing, or administering public funds, or where undertaking a public function in order to prevent and detect fraud.

The Cabinet Office is responsible for carrying out data matching exercises. Data matching involves comparing sets of data such as the payroll records of a body against other records held by the same or another body to see how far they match. The data is usually personal information. The data matching allows potentially fraudulent claims and payments to be identified. Where a match is found it may indicate that there is an inconsistency which requires further investigation. No assumption can be made as to whether there is fraud, error or another explanation until an investigation is carried out.

We are a mandatory participant in the Cabinet Office’s National Fraud Initiative; a data matching exercise to assist in the prevention and detection of fraud. We are required to provide particular sets of data to the Minister for the Cabinet Office for matching each exercise, as detailed here on the www.gov.uk website. For further information on how the Trust uses your information, please refer to the Trust’s Fair Processing Notice.

The processing of data by the Cabinet Office in a data matching exercise is carried out with statutory authority under its powers in Part 6 of the Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014. It does not require the consent of the individuals concerned under data protection legislation or the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation). Data matching by the Cabinet Office is subject to a code of data matching practice, also available on the www.gov.uk website.

The Cabinet Office has published its Data Privacy notice, which sets out how the Cabinet Office will use your personal data and your rights. The notice is made under Article 14 of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

The legal basis for processing your personal data is that processing is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority vested in the data controller.

We want you to know that we take privacy very seriously. Please be assured that we will always manage your data securely and responsibly.

For further information on data matching at this organisation, please contact the Counter Fraud team on 0191 441 5936 or email counterfraud@audit-one.co.uk