Southern Cross Healthcare has pledged that all 44,000 of its employees are to be transferred to new care home operators under their existing terms and conditions after confirming that the group is to be broken up.
The organisation’s biggest landlords, including Four Seasons, NHP and London & Regional, have been in crisis talks with Southern Cross for the last month to try and thrash out a deal to avoid pushing it into insolvency.
The firm had suffered from a drop in local authority fees and a ballooning £250 million rental bill. A total of eight landlords control 75% of the firm’s 752 homes, which house 31,000 residents.
But the landlords have now indicated their intention to leave the group and a plan is currently being formulated by the Restructuring Committee, of which they were a part, to facilitate the smooth transition of all of the homes to both the landlords and new operators as Southern Cross is wound down.
About 250 of the homes will be transferred immediately, but the owners of the rest are still finalising their plans and may end up using existing Southern Cross back-office staff and some of its management.
Although the details of the restructuring have not yet been settled, the company’s board of directors issued a statement indicating that, in addition to ensuring continuity of care to residents, all payments to trade creditors would be maintained and all home-based staff would be transferred to their new employers under current terms and conditions.
Chief executive Jamie Buchan said: “My objective, and that of my team, is to continue to provide excellent care to every resident and to manage the programme of transition professionally. All 44,000 staff can take pride from the significant operational turnaround and improvements in care delivery, which have been achieved over the past two years.”
In news elsewhere, Amazon said that it planned to create 900 jobs in Rugeley, Staffordshire by opening its seventh UK fulfilment centre. The packing warehouse will start operating in September and will be staffed by a mixture of permanent and temporary staff. The site will fulfil orders for customers in the UK, Europe and elsewhere.
In January, the online retailer also said that it would create 750 new permanent jobs and 1,500 temporary jobs during peak times by open another centre in Dunfermline before the end of the year. The site will be merged with another existing one in Glenrothes and staff invited to move across.
