DESPITE bitter trade union objections, a High Court judge has opened the way for controversial part-privatisation of family health services by 10 NHS trusts in the south west of England.

Unison went to court in London to challenge the trusts’ plans to shut their in-house provision and transfer their family health services role to NHS Shared Business Services.

One of the trusts involved in the project is NHS Swindon and another is NHS Wiltshire.

SBS is a joint venture between the Department Of Health and private sector operators, Steria.

Under the deal it could take over the trusts’ roles in a wide range of areas, from patient registration to medical records and breast and cervical cancer screening.

The cost-cutting move, which will see large numbers of NHS employees transferred to partly-private SBS, is due to be sealed on March 31, but Unison argued that the trusts failed to abide by government rules regulating the award of public contracts.

However, Mr Justice Eady has stopped Unison’s judicial review challenge in its tracks when he ruled the union did not have sufficient legal standing to pursue the case in court and had, in any event, delayed too long before launching legal proceedings.

The judge said he could only speculate as to what might have happened had public tendering procedures been meticulously carried out as there were no other known bidders who might have been expected to try to win the contracts.

While stopping short of dubbing Unison a “busybody” – a description which he said would be inappropriate and unnecessarily offensive – the judge said the union had no sufficient interest to bring its challenge to court.

The trusts had been considering the shift since January last year and a representative from Unison had been at a May 2011 meeting at which the proposals were explained, said the judge, ruling that the legal challenge had been launched too late.

During the hearing, Unison’s counsel, Nigel Giffin QC, said: “The union would have preferred any new arrangements for the provision of the family health services to be made in-house, so that those employees engaged in the services would have remained in the employment of the public sector.”

Jan Stubbings, the chief executive of NHS Swindon, said: “We are aware of the outcome of the permissions hearing and our focus now is to work with staff and NHS SBS to achieve the best possible outcome.

“The provision of high quality FHS administrative services will continue to be the top priority as contract arrangements are finalised.”

“By bringing some services together in specialist centres, there is scope for the NHS to save up to £10m over six years in the south west when the transfer goes ahead – money that can be invested in frontline NHS services.”