Our Team

News

ARRS Chaos – How to avoid some of the ARRS employment traps

One of the underlying issues with ARRS resources is the challenge in deploying staff across multiple member practices. This sharing of resources cuts across the usual employment relationship where an employee works for a single employer, and across most employment laws and regulations which have a single employer arrangement in mind.

Because a PCN is a contractual construct (as opposed to a legal entity), it cannot employ staff in its own name. PCNs are therefore forced to come up with structuring and contractual workarounds to achieve the desired result.  

These workarounds include:

  1. appointing a ‘lead practice’ to act as the employer; 
  2. entering into a ‘joint employer’ arrangement; 
  3. sub-contracting with a GP Federation or third party; 
  4. incorporating the PCN. 

The desired outcome is the same, namely a PCN resource who works across all the member practices, and where all the practices have the same or similar rights and obligations towards that member of staff. 

Where to start? Identify the key responsibilities

The easiest way to achieve the desired outcome is to break down the various responsibilities associated with engaging staff, and agree which entity will perform it and how.  Key responsibilities include: 

  • Recruitment responsibility
  • Day to day management, eg scheduling & work allocation 
  • HR management, eg disciplinary and grievance procedures, annual review, agreeing pay and pay rises. 
  • Organising cover in the event of absence and deciding who will pay for it (ARRS does not currently reimburse this cost).
  • Planning and paying for dismissal or redundancy 
  • Managing plans to restructure the PCN and deciding what should happen to the ARRS staff members

In a traditional employer/employee scenario, all of these responsibilities would sit with a single employer. By contrast, in a PCN the responsibilities can be shared amongst core network practices, or transferred, in whole or in part, to another organisation entirely.  The answer will depend upon your structuring choices and could be any one of (1) to (4) above, but what is clear is that not all of the responsibilities need to reside in one place, indeed there may be differing optimal solutions for each different resource. 

Case Studies

In our previous blog we gave some examples of resourcing problems that PCNs are encountering, and will now explore those further:

Q     Who will cover my Clinical Pharmacist when they are on short term leave?

A     Firstly, consider whether cover will be required for the duration of the staff member’s absence. This needs to be agreed between the practices, but full  cover is more likely in the case of a clinical resource than a non-clinical one.

If cover is required, then who will provide and pay for the cover is a contractual question. Broadly, unless you’ve agreed amongst yourselves or with your supplier (in the event you’ve sub-contracted) that there will be cover, then the default position is there will be no cover. 

If the employer is a lead practice, the answer should lie in your PCN Agreement or more likely, a Workforce Sharing Agreement. 

If the employer is a GP Federation, Trust or similar, the answer should lie in the PCN sub-contract with that party.

Q     My Occupational Therapist is under-performing and I want to move to an alternative provider – can I do so?

A     This scenario clearly assumes that a third party is providing the occupational therapist. Subject to any termination provisions in the contract, you would normally be free to move to another supplier of services. However, if the occupational therapist is working exclusively for your PCN, then the switch may be a service provision change to which the TUPE Regulations will apply. The effect of this is that even if you were to move to another supplier, the under-performing occupational therapist is likely to automatically transfer to the new supplier and you could therefore still have the same person turning up for work.  

In reality, this is likely to be resolved by discussion with the supplier and you will have to go through the contract management processes with that supplier. This will only be possible if you have a well drafted contract setting out the expected service levels and you are able to explain in what ways those service levels are not being met. 

Q     Who picks up liability in a redundancy situation? 

A     The answer to this is always the employer in the first instance.  The employer may be able to recover the costs from the member practices but only if there is an agreement in place stipulating that they can do so. This would either be the PCN Agreement, a Workforce Sharing Agreement or a sub-contract depending on the structure.

Inevitably, this is something which is likely to be hotly contested so it is important that these documents are well drafted so that all parties are confident that they rely on them. Also bear in mind that any contractual promise is only as good as the party who has given it, so you will want to make sure you understand the financial standing of your contracting parties.

Conclusion

In summary, the use of ARRS resources is inherently complicated and goes against the normal way of employing staff. Our recommendation is that you analyse the key responsibilities and figure out which legal entity is going to be responsible for each of those and then critically, make sure that this is written into the relevant agreements. Those agreements could be a PCN Agreement, a Workforce Sharing Agreement or a sub-contract. The key is that these documents are well drafted and properly negotiated. Remember that these are all legally binding documents and are the only mechanism to achieve any of the above outcomes.

Once you’ve determined this, then the relevant employer must ensure that each contract of employment with a PCN resource reflects the unique arrangements have been made. It is unlikely that a standard ‘off the shelf’ employment contract will do this, so this will usually need some careful drafting. 

As can be seen, working with an ARRS resources can be complicated and unfortunately, problems are likely to emerge. As always, the risks can be minimised by taking appropriate advice in advance.

If you would like to speak to an expert solicitor who can help you with your PCN Agreement, Workforce Sharing Agreement, employment contracts or third party sub-contracts, then please call Daphne Robertson on 01483 511555 or email d.robertson@drsolicitors.com  

Share