UNISON, the health workers union, have organised two lunch time protests against the privatisation of the Estates Services at both Nottingham's hospitals. They are at 12-12.30 and 1-1.30pm. Read more about the situation below or on the UNISON website.

On Monday September 30th, the Trust Board announced that they had made the decision about the final three bidders, and the existing award-winning NHS staffed team have been dropped from the process, because the private companies were cheaper. If being rejected from the bidding process wasn't enough, the Trust also told the 'In House' team that the Trust felt that they weren't capable of progressing their services, which might appear a strange thing to say considering that the Estates and Facilities staff have won numerous awards and accolades for, amongst other things, innovation.

Including the 'In House' team, there were originally seven bidders, those being:

1) The 'In House' Team. 2) Sodexo. 3) ISS. 4) Initial. 5) Balfour Beatty. 6) Interserve. 7) Carillion.

Of those seven, three had been heavily fined for bid-rigging:

1. Interserve (£11.6M Fine) 2. Carillion (£5.4M Fine) 3. Balfour Beatty (£5.2M Fine).

Considering that the largest ever national investigation ever carried out by the Office of Fair Trading was instigated when financial 'irregularities' were discovered by an NHS auditor at the Queens Medical Centre, one would have presumed that the Trust might have wanted to be like Caesar's wife.

That doesn't appear to be the case considering the three bidders chosen are:

1. Interserve 2. Carillion 3. Balfour Beatty.