Classification: Official
Publication reference: PRN00076

To:

• ICB:
  • chief executives
  • chief operating officers
  • chairs
  • chief people officers/human resources (HR) directors
• Trust (including ambulance trust):
  • chief executives
  • chief operating officers
  • chief people officers/HR directors
  • directors of nursing
  • Commissioning support unit (CSU) managing directors

cc:

• Regional:
  • directors
  • directors of nursing
  • heads of Emergency Preparedness, Resilience and Response (EPRR)

Dear colleagues

Industrial Action: workforce and rescheduled activity situation report (SitRep) data collections via Strategic Data Collection Service (SDCS)

In light of industrial action (IA) planned by multiple trade unions representing NHS clinical and non-clinical staff, NHS England will be conducting two SitRep data collections over any announced periods of action on the SDCS data collection tool.  These SitReps are:

An IA workforce SitRep – which will collect information from all organisations where staff have voted to take industrial action (note that this will vary for each period of action, but we will ensure that only affected organisations are included each time). This SitRep will collect numbers of staff taking part in the IA, and total numbers of staff due to work. The data will be collected a day in arrears (so where there is a single day of action the data will be collected the day after action, and where the action lasts more than one day the collection will be repeated to ensure we collect data for the full period of action). Workforce data from organisations affected by the RCN action on 20 December will be collected on 21 December, and data from the ambulance trusts affected by the action on 21 and 28 December, will be collected on 22 and 29 December. Workforce data will also be collected from Liverpool University Hospitals NHS FT, Liverpool Heart and Chest NHS FT and Mersey Care NHS FT on 22 December in respect of the action on 21 December.

An IA rescheduled activity SitRep (Acute Trusts only) – which will collect information from affected organisations undertaking elective activity. This will collect numbers of elective inpatient and outpatient activity that has had to be rescheduled as a result of IA. We will run these collections as follows:

• We will run one collection on 21 December for acute trusts affected by the RCN action (this will cover the 7 day period from 17-23 December inclusive).
• We will then re-run the collection on 22 December for all acute trusts (this will cover the 7 day period from 18-24 December inclusive). Note: this means acute trusts affected by the RCN action on 20 December will be making two submissions on consecutive days, and the second submission will update the position submitted the day before (so will include the activity reported the day before plus any additional cancellations made after that first submission).
• We will then run the collection for all acute trusts on 29 December, to cover the action on 28 December (this will cover the 7 day period from 25-31 December inclusive).

Submission requirements

Both submissions will be made through the SDCS, and on any day that the collection is running we will open the collection at 9am and the deadline for submission will be 2pm that day. The template will be available to download from SDCS from 9am on the day the collection is run. Note that each period of action will have a new template and templates from previous periods will not upload.

The data required for each submission is shown in the draft templates in Annexes A and B, more detailed guidance notes will be shared with registered submitters prior to the first collection.

Data collection submitters

We will create initial submitters list for each organisation as per the table below:

If you want to make changes to the submitter list for your organisation, then please contact emergency.collections@nhs.net.

Please also contact this email address if you have any issues in accessing the return for your organisation.

Mental Health and Learning Disabilities and Autism and Community Services activity impact

A separate data collection in Excel format will be used to collect information relating to rescheduled activity in the above services. This will be circulated via Regional Operations Centres.

Many thanks for your cooperation and support in providing this information.

Yours sincerely,

Stephen Groves, Director of NHS Resilience, NHS England